


Find A Way (To Make It Back Home)

by belwrites



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Artist Steve Rogers, Blow Jobs, Bucky is an English major, Fluff, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Miscommunication, Reverse Fake Dating, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-08 01:27:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7737913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belwrites/pseuds/belwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fresh off a year abroad, Head Resident Assistant Steve Rogers finds his senior year of college to be full of changes, and he's not just talking about the growth spurt. He's more concerned with the fact that his best friend...isn't talking to him? Is dating his ex? May or may not be missing an arm?</p>
<p>In which Steve has no fucking clue what's going on, but he's trying, Bucky learns how to communicate with his best friend again, and everyone quietly panics about the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Stucky Big Bang 2016!
> 
> Title from the song "Home" by American Authors.
> 
> Art for this fic is by lucidnancyboy! Click [here](http://lucidnancyboy.tumblr.com/post/148741271479/im-not-sure-im-worth-all-this-steve-by-jessie) to see it!
> 
> This fic features HOH!Steve, and several characters use ASL, which will be denoted by _italics_ in the text. Special thanks to [the-kellephant](http://the-kellephant.tumblr.com) and [greattrashking](http://greattrashking.tumblr.com) for answering my questions regarding Deaf culture and ASL!
> 
> Also thank you to my girlfriend [burymeinsurprise](http://burymeinsurprise.tumblr.com) for her unwavering support of my writing and insistence that I write when I tried to clean my room to procrastinate. Also thanks for all the (◕‿◕✿) when I described the potential sex scenes to you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note about geography and The College Experience: this all takes place at a fictional liberal arts college somewhere in the Westchester area, but I've borrowed some aspects of it (i.e. the volunteer fire department and EMS) from my own experiences at a liberal arts college in a far more rural area. I've based the role of RAs and reslife in general on the model that my college uses, and the role that I play as my college's equivalent of an RA/head RA.

The storage unit in the Bronx has a numerical lock on it. The code is an amalgamation of Steve and Bucky’s birthdates without the zeroes: 7431. When Bucky relocks it, he spins the numbers out of order completely at random, so that you couldn’t just swipe every pin up or down one number and break in. Steve does exactly this. It drives Sarah and Bucky crazy.

The lock is reading all fives when Steve gets up there to move back into his dorm. All of his stuff got put in the back of the unit at the end of sophomore year, when they knew he wouldn’t be back and Bucky would need to reach his stuff first. But all of Steve’s stuff is at the front, and it touches Steve in a way that sort of hurts his chest, not like an asthma attack.

He moves his things into the bed of the pickup truck Natasha is borrowing from ResLife and drives it back to campus and parks in the parking lot next to Kirby.

He wondered, when he got his assignment, if maybe he did the college thing wrong. He was a freshman RA his sophomore year, and now he’s a Head RA, sure, but still in the building he spent his other two years on this campus in. He’s not living off-campus, or in the on-campus apartments, or even in an upperclassman dorm.

But he loves the freshmen. Loves how excited they are, how eager they are to be here, even loves how terrified they look when he shakes their hands and welcomes them to college. It was funny, too, to see their parents’ reactions to the skinny little five-foot-four kid with the hearing aid telling them he was in charge of their children’s safety. Oh well. Not anymore.

Natasha said something about him being able to bench a truck now. Steve doubts it.

Steve manages to get everything out of the truck and into the building, but not quite up all the stairs. His chest is starting to feel a little tight, so he pauses for a second on the stairs. His inhaler is somewhere in his suitcase, or maybe his backpack. He’s gone long enough between attacks that he’s actually lost track. It’s an interesting feeling, not knowing where the thing he relied on for most of his life to not die in everyday situations is.

He leans back on the stairs, stretching. He checks his phone. Nothing new.

“Rogers, that’s a fire hazard.”

Natasha is standing in the doorway from the hall to the stairwell, one hip cocked out. She’s got big sunglasses on, and her hair, much shorter than the last time he saw her, is tied back in a cute little half-ponytail. Steve jumps up to hug her. She hugs him back, laughing.

“I forgot you got tall,” she says as he pulls away. “Jesus, you’re even bigger in real life.”

“I’m not that big, Nat.”

“Shut up, yes you are.” She bends over to pick up one of the last bins. “Third floor, right?”

“Yeah.”

Steve grabs a couple boxes and heads up the stairs with her. He left his room unlocked, but Nat can’t get the door open with the bin in her hands. She sets it down heavily.

“Steve, what the ever loving fuck do you have in this?”

“Coffeemaker. Coffee pods. Maybe some books?”

“What is wrong with you.” She brushes past him to push the door the rest of the way open, and freezes in the doorway. “Goddammit. I should’ve applied.”

“Clint was right, you don’t have time for this, remember?” Steve reminds her, nudging her with his shoulder to let him in so he can put his boxes down. “I barely have time for this.”

“Oh please. You’re the pride and joy of ResLife. Phil basically complained to me every chance he got about how you abandoned him.”

“And you’re a double major with a minor in a language, which might as well be a third major.”

“I was already fluent in Russian, thank you,” she says primly, taking a box cutter out of the back pocket of her shorts and slicing through the packing tape of the box cleanly, in a way that, for some reason, still threatens Steve. “Do you trust me to set this up?”

“I don’t _not_ trust you,” Steve says. She laughs.

Steve runs back down the stairs to get the last bin and boxes and comes back to find her neatly arranging the coffee pod tree on the windowsill. Nat leans up against his desk and watches as he unpacks the bin labeled “BED STUFF” and starts pulling out mattress pads and sheets.

“Target run?” Nat asks, looking at the mismatched pillowcases.

“Maybe later.” She raises an eyebrow. He leans back against the bed, matching her position almost exactly. “Have you seen Bucky?” Something flashes across her face. It might be a frown, if it stuck around.

“You haven’t heard from him.” It’s not a question. Steve nods anyway. “At all?”

“He dropped off sometime after Christmas. He’s been at school, right?” Natasha nods once.

“He should be back next Tuesday.”

“With the rest of the school? What about the firefighters?”

“Steve, he quit.”

***

The opening dinner is always prime. It’s also the first time Steve has seen most of his friends in a year.

Sam is in Lee this year. Neither of them ever lived in Lee — as freshmen, they were in Kirby, and sophomore year, Sam was assigned Goodman before getting bounced back to the freshman quad while Steve was abroad — but it’s the building opposite Kirby so they’ll be interacting more.

“I’m telling you, man, quad-wide capture the flag,” he says as they slide into their seats at the table, plates piled high from the ResLife-funded buffet. “It’ll be bomb.”

“Not for another semester,” Sharon Carter, who’s taking over Goodman this year, chimes in. “They just planted new grass. Maintenance’ll skin you before you run all over it.”

“Did they consider timing, like, at all?” Natasha asks, stabbing her salad and cocking an eyebrow.

“Does anyone here?” Sam says.

“Welcome back!”

“Oh, lord, here we go,” Sam mutters to Steve.

Phil Coulson, Assistant Director of Housing and Residential Life, is standing at the front of the room, beaming at the Resident Assistants and other ADs. “It’s so great to see all of you here today,” Phil continues, big grin still plastered on. “We’re so excited for this year, but first, all our great training activities!” At Steve’s table, everyone pulls a face. “Some quick things. If you have a car on campus, and you haven’t been to Campus Safety’s office to register, you must do that. They’re not going to start ticketing until tomorrow at noon, but…”

Steve tunes him out. It’s the same stuff he’s heard before, and it doesn’t actually apply to him since he doesn’t have a car. He stares at Sam until Sam looks at him. He shakes a hand, palm up and fingers spread, at him: _what?_

Steve leans his head down and holds up his hands, fingers tight together with the thumbs tucked into his palm. He touches them to his temples. Sam is not nearly as good at controlling his faces as Natasha is. Still, he tries to school himself into something like neutrality and shakes his head minutely, making an L shape with his hand and tipping it towards Steve. _Later_.

Sharon is watching them curiously. When Steve looks at her, her eyes flick back to Phil.

***

Bucky’s facebook has gone unchanged pretty much since his birthday in March. Steve knows, because he’s made a habit of checking it once or twice a week. He’s not messaging him (anymore), but he’s still checking to make sure he doesn’t miss anything. It’s still unchanged, still the picture of the two of them sophomore year, right after Steve hit his growth spurt and right before Steve and Peggy’s breakup, laughing at Clint and Sam, off to the side, not in the camera’s field.

Steve jumps when he hears the knock on his door. Everyone on campus always jokes about how haunted the dorms are, and Kirby is a scary building at night during the semester, when everyone’s in the building. Don’t even think about when you’re the only one there.

Pepper is at the door, hair braided back and she’s holding a bottle. Natasha and Sam are grinning behind her.

“We thought we should celebrate making it to senior year and keeping the job,” Pepper tells him.

He lets them in. He spent most of his post-dinner downtime rearranging his furniture. He did indeed push the mattresses together and put the wardrobes side by side on the wall opposite. The floor is freed up, a new area rug from his and Nat’s adventure to Target still curling at the edges, but Sam plops himself down right on the corner, effectively flattening it.

“Okay, most miserable summer drinking game,” he says. “I got all you fuckers beat.”

“I doubt it,” Pepper says coolly, producing shot glasses from her purse. She hands them to Sam as she sits down. Steve and Natasha find their own places on the carpet. “Rhodey’s en route,” Pepper adds, looking at Steve. “He’ll need to be let in.”

“Why?”

“Campo redid the security in dorms,” Natasha tells him, taking the bottle from Pepper and cracking the seal. “We can only get into the buildings we’re assigned now.”

“What?”

“It’s a Title Nine thing, man, don’t ask. There were petitions,” Sam shakes his head, setting up the shot glasses in a neat cluster in the middle of the carpet. “Potts, you really think you got my shit-tastic summer beat?”

“I know it,” she says, not at all smug.

“The Russians came back,” Natasha says casually as she fills the shot glasses one by one, careful not to spill on the new carpet. The others stare at her.

“Oh?” Steve breaks the silence first.

“They were very impressed with the education I’m receiving,” she says, the words stilted, halfway in the accent she only lets show when she’s too tired to fight it. “They look forward to seeing me join the Company.” She smirks at them. “Who wants to top that?”

“Riley took me home in July,” Sam says. “To Madison.”

“About damn time,” Nat says, taking a shot glass but not drinking. Steve raises an eyebrow.

“How was that?”

“Y’know how the Bible Belt gets pissy about anything remotely pro-gay or anti-racism or whatever? Mix both of ‘em together, just imagine the shit show.”

“How was his family?” Steve asks.

“He’s got a very nice sister,” Sam says definitively. He turns to Natasha, raising his shot glass in toast to her. “Got you beat, Romanoff.”

“Oh, fuck off, Wilson, a bunch of homophobes do not top who are probably the origins of the Russian mob coming to visit and threatening you with the Russian Imperial Ballet Company because of _tradition_ ,” she says.

“I spent the summer interning at Stark Industries,” Pepper says suddenly. Nat and Sam turn to her. “Directly under Howard.”

“Like, Tony’s dad?” Sam says. Pepper nods. “Jesus.”

“How did Tony do?”

“Well, he spent most of his summer in rehab and recovery, so I imagine better than he would have,” Pepper says calmly. Sam takes his shot unprompted.

“Finally cleaned up?” Natasha says, not unkindly. She also downs her shot.

“The prospect of officially moving out at the end of this year is giving him a goal, I think,” Pepper says. “And the fact that he’s paying for his own housing this year.”

Steve quietly takes his own shot. Sam turns to him. “Okay, Rogers, what’ve you got?” Steve shrugs.

“Honestly, I had a pretty decent summer. Came home, my ma put me to work for the first few weeks, fixing stuff she couldn’t, I worked at the art gallery in Clinton Hill, quit Grindr.” He leaves out the part where he and Sarah spent late nights trying to find out what happened to Bucky. None of them have been keen on telling him anything.

“Goddammit, you and your fucking idyllic life,” Sam grumbles, reaching for the bottle.

“It’s not idyllic!”

“Steve, what you just described might as well be your summer wet dream,” Sam says, pouring himself another shot and downing it immediately. “If you don’t mind, I’ll drown my sorrows.” His phone chirps. He glances at it. “Fuckin’ Rhodey’s fuckin’ here.” He gets up to let him in.

“You quit Grindr, huh,” Nat says as soon as Sam’s gone.

“Too many dick pics, not enough actual messaging,” Steve says. “Tinder abroad was interesting.”

“Of course it was.”

“Did I tell you about the Scandinavian brothers I met who shared an account?”

“ _Steve_.”

***

Steve manages to avoid Peggy throughout training. All good things must end.

“Steve,” she says, plaintive. He glances at her from across the table. It’s the last day of training. The freshmen move in tomorrow. Bucky moves in in two days. “May I sit?”

He’s by himself. Nat is waiting on an omelet and Sam and Pepper are picking Riley and Tony up from the airport. He gestures with his spoon.

“Are you wearing your hearing aid or do I need to sign?” she asks, signing along with the question to the best of her ability; she’s out of practice, evidently.

“Do you want the whole staff listening in or not?” he asks. She frowns at him. He turns his head to show her. “Yes, I’m wearing it, Peggy.”

“I want to apologize for what happened at the end of our sophomore year,” she starts. “It wasn’t fair to either of us what happened, or how it ended.”

“Glad you see it that way.” Her frown turns into more of a glare now.

“Steve.”

“Fine, sorry.” He’s being petulant. He can’t help it.

“Phil and Maria offered me the head R.A. position last year and I didn’t even apply because I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, because I knew it was what you wanted. But — Steve, look at me.” He glances up. Her face is open, calm, almost concerned. Her hair is tied back in that rolled bun thing she does. “We can’t ignore each other. Not like we did last year.”

“I’m not in Europe anymore, so yeah.”

“Would you stop being an arse for five minutes?” she demands. “I’m trying to apologize to you, and, frankly, you should be apologizing to me as well. Or have you forgotten what happened the last time we were here.”

Steve exhales audibly through his nose. She’s right. She was always right.

“I’m sorry, Peg,” he says finally. “You didn’t deserve what happened.”

“Nor did you,” she says, and she seems appeased. “Thank you for your apology.”

“Thank you for yours.” He looks at her. “Peg, you don’t wanna —”

“I’m seeing someone else,” she says primly. “Don’t flatter yourself, Rogers.”

“Thank God.”

***

Steve spent the summer, when he wasn’t working at the art gallery, with Sarah, trying to find Bucky. But he never showed up at the volunteer fire house in their neighborhood, didn’t even come home, apparently. The Barnes were spending the summer situating Bucky’s sister Rebecca at her new job in Indianapolis and then visiting Winifred’s family, which, conveniently, did not have wifi or cell service. So Steve’s mood oscillated, since the moment he got off the plane in JFK to the present, between worry and anger. On the day Bucky is supposed to move in, it’s anger.

No one will tell him where Bucky is, or when he’s getting on campus, or even where he’s living. The shared documents of residents and their halls are only shared with specific staffs — and since he’s a freshman RA, he doesn’t get to see where upperclassmen residents are living. So, he has no idea where Bucky will be, once he’s here. He already got kicked out of the ResLife office for lurking. Sam coaxes him down to the gym, where Steve laps him repeatedly on the indoor track.

“Man, I miss the days when a stiff breeze blew you over,” Sam pants when they take a break. Steve isn’t breathing nearly as hard, or even wheezing, but he’s as red as the track below them. Some things never change.

“I don’t,” Steve replies. He digs the carrying case he keeps his hearing aid in out of his backpack and pops in his hearing aid so Sam isn’t stuck on Steve’s left. He passes Sam a water bottle from his backpack and gets his own, too. Sam checks his phone and makes a “hm” sound.

“Care to share?” Steve says. Sam glances at him and then back to his phone.

“It’s, um. Bucky’s on campus.”

“Where?”

“Steve —”

“What? Why hasn’t anyone told me where he is?” Sam is giving him this _look_.

“We wanted to tell you as soon as everything happened but Bucky wouldn’t let us,” Sam says. “It was dumb as hell and we tried to convince him you needed to know but —”

“What happened?” Sam sighs.

“Look, I shouldn’t be the one telling you this. You’re gonna have to ask him.”

***

Classes start and Steve doesn’t hear anything about Bucky. At most, Natasha will tell him that he’s on campus being an active student. He’s expected to graduate with them at the end of the year. When Steve asks why this would even be a concern, Nat and Sam share a look and don’t answer the question.

Classes starting also means that Tony is back on campus. Well, academically, anyway.

“America’s favorite son, returned from a year across the pond,” he says, looking at Steve over his sunglasses after class on a humid Thursday. “Jesus, Pep wasn’t kidding when she said you bulked up.”

“Nice to see you, too, Tony,” Steve says, dropping to the ground to join him and Pepper and Natasha. “How’s the physics department treating its most valuable student?”

“Like all their other students. Back a week and I’ve already considered changing majors twice.”

“To what?” Nat asks. “You’re literally not qualified for anything else.” Tony gives her an unimpressed look over his sunglasses, then pushes them up his face and leans back against the tree.

“Have you seen Peg’s new flame?” Tony asks Steve. “Your ex really has a thing for brunettes, apparently.”

“Change never killed anyone, Tony,” Steve says patiently. He won’t take whatever bait Tony is trying to dangle in front of his face. “And I already knew she was seeing someone. We talked during training.”

“Talked? Or screamed?” Tony is smirking now.

“For god’s sake, we were _not_ that loud.”

“The servery staff was still talking about it last semester,” Nat says. “It was kinda loud.”

“You know what, Romanoff?” But she just smiles serenely at him. Her attention shifts to something behind him.

“Speaking of Margaret,” she says. Steve turns.

Peggy is walking and laughing, talking to two brown-haired people. The other girl she’s with is also laughing, but the man in between them — who looks so familiar but his head is tilted down and Steve can’t see his face — is not. Peggy has her hair swept up into a high ponytail, and the other girl has her hair falling around her shoulders in ringlets.

“Heya, Peg, how’s things?”

“Glad to see you back on campus, Mr. Stark,” she replies, setting her sunglasses on top of her head to talk to him. “Steve.”

“Hey, Peg,” Steve replies.

“Whoa.”

The man he hadn’t recognized looks an awful lot like Bucky. Except Bucky never let his hair get that long, or went that long between shaving except during finals, or was ever that skinny. He looks — _exhausted_ , Steve decides, between the dark circles and the slouching posture. His thin sweatpants and black hoodie don’t help that. He’s keeping both hands in his hoodie’s pockets.

“Nat wasn’t kidding when she said you beefed up,” he says, trying for a smile but it doesn’t reach all the way up his face.

“Bucky.” His shoulders twitch uncomfortably. What is Steve supposed to say to him? “How was your summer?” Bucky’s mouth twitches, like he wants to laugh at him.

“Fine. Indiana’s nice, this time of year,” he says. Steve sort of just nods. “You have a good summer?”

“Yeah, great, worked at that gallery in Clinton Hill,” Steve says, not sure how the words are coming out of his mouth so casually. He can’t stop staring. Bucky looks at the ground, uncomfortable.

“Hi, I’m Angie,” the girl next to him suddenly says, reaching a hand between them. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Steve,” Steve says, shaking her hand but not really looking at her. He’s too distracted by how utterly uncomfortable Bucky looks.

“ _Steve?_ Peg, you didn’t say he was all,” she trails off, and waves her hands around in Steve’s general direction.

“He wasn’t,” Peggy says crisply, and then she looks at Tony and Pepper. “We saw you as we were coming out of class and thought we’d stop by. How have your classes been so far?”

“Oh, you know, every time I walk into a lab it’s like, do I tell them I’m not gonna blow anything up this semester, or is that promise not even worth making?” Tony says.

“Well, at least you’ll be sober in all your labs this year,” Nat says, nudging him with the toe of her Converse.

_Were you going to answer my texts?_ Steve signs, taking the chance now that the attention seems to have shifted from himself and Bucky. If it’s possible, Bucky looks even more uncomfortable. He shakes his head, his long hair falling into his face. When he looks at Steve again, Steve signs _why?_

“Look, Stevie, I’m real sorry about that, I just,” but then he frowns suddenly, unsure how to finish that sentence. He’s talking quietly enough that Peggy and Angie and the rest of them are pretending they can’t hear. Steve shakes one hand at him _what?_ Bucky just shakes his head.

“Hey, Peg, I’m gonna,” he says, cutting off his own sentence again. She looks at him, eyes concerned and Steve remembers how it feels to be on the receiving end of that look and _oh._

“Of course, darling,” she says. “Let me know you get back all right?” Bucky nods, not looking at her, lips pressed thin. He looks at Steve through his eyelashes and then suddenly turns and leaves, moving like Steve’s on fire.

Except, once, he probably would’ve run towards Steve if he had been.


	2. Chapter 2

The senior art show happens in April, before finals. It’s designed to allow a little breathing room, one less thing to worry about during reading days. But Steve privately thinks that maybe they didn’t take into account the fact that the senior art seminar is a yearlong course and that in and of itself is stressful, especially when one has managed a damn near perfect GPA, in spite of all one’s medical emergencies the first two years of school. 

The first month is research and outlining, planning out what the theme of the showing. It was a topic of much debate between Steve and Sarah this summer, bouncing around ideas since Steve’s usual brainstormer was MIA. Despite everything he saw over the last year, Steve just doesn’t know what kind of message he wants to convey. The options are limited — doing something with gay rights seems obvious, and also what he spent most of his freshman year doing. 

He gets a studio in the art building this year, approximately the same size as his single-occupant dorm room sophomore year, with a table up against the far wall, wedged in (he probably couldn’t move it if he tried) underneath a huge window with western exposure. It’s perfect.

He finds himself in his studio the weekend after he sees Bucky, sitting against the wall with his legs stretched out, his laptop perched on his thighs. He’s going over the duty schedule, alternating between that spreadsheet of dates and names and pictures of art shows past. Someone taps on the door.

“Yeah?”

Natasha lets herself in. She’s wearing skintight black pants with tall boots and a black halter top, her hair down and curly with a full face of makeup, clearly having come from an evening out.

“Did you have fun with Clint?” he asks. 

“If I didn’t know him like I do, I swear I’d think he was gay,” she says. “What are you doing?”

“Thinking about art.”

“Of course you are,” she perches herself on the still bare table. “You’ve been weird.”

“I have not.”

“Yeah, you have.” She kicks her feet up and crosses her ankles, her legs draped across the table. “You talked to Bucky?”

“Not since Thursday.”

“Steve.”

“He hasn’t tried to talk to me, either. In fact, he hasn’t tried to talk to me in about eight months and no one will tell me where he’s been.”

“You gotta be patient with him,” Nat says. “He had a really shitty spring. Like, shittier than Tony’s, arguably.”

“Do I get to know what happened, or —”

“Get your head out of your ass for five seconds,” Nat says. “Look, I know you’re frustrated. I know that you guys have that weird mind-meld soul-sharing platonic-lovers thing going on, or at least you did before you went abroad, but you gotta chill. Peggy says he’s still not a hundred percent even with the summer and we’re all figuring out how to navigate this. Just, be his friend, okay? Don’t push. He’ll tell you when he’s ready.” 

They’re both silent. Steve doesn’t look at her. 

“When did he and Peggy get…” he trails off. He’s not totally sure how to phrase it.

“In the spring. She’s helped him a lot.”

“Didn’t think they liked each other too much.” Natasha raises an eyebrow. “They were good about hiding it around me but I knew. He never said but he didn’t like her at all. Why are you making that face?”

“What face?” Natasha schools her expression into something neutral. “She’s been really good for him. While you weren’t here, I mean.”

“Does everyone want me to apologize for going abroad or something? I came back. And, it’s not like anyone told me what was happening.”

“We know,” Nat says, sounding like she’s forcing her patience. “We’re not mad at you, Steve. None of us blame you. Especially Bucky, but it’s hard. He can’t be the same person he was when you left a year ago.”

“I didn’t expect him to,” Steve replies. “I’d be a moron if I thought my best friend would be the same after not speaking to me for eight months.”

***

Steve’s favorite part of being an RA is definitely the residents. He had long Skype conversations with Phil at strange times all last year, talking about whether he’d return at all (that was a short-lived topic) and if (when) he did, where he’d be placed (this had a much longer life). 

The struggle was whether or not Steve really wanted to live with twenty or so freshman boys for a whole year. Would he be able to devote enough time to the hall? The undergrad college was small, small enough that RAs were considered a “primary student resource,” especially with freshmen. And ultimately, Steve built his schedule, outlined to the hour, over the two weeks in March he had off so he could see what kind of time on the hall he’d have. And, he decided, he had enough.

Steve’s hall this year seems to be a quiet group. They’ve been on campus well over two weeks, their families still only a phone call away but they’re well and truly alone. Steve privately thinks they might be afraid of the twenty-one-year-old guy with arms bigger than some of their torsos, but they don’t seem so timid that they don’t want to engage. He can already tell who might present some issues (Nathan, a few doors down, has apparently already shacked up with one of Sharon’s girls) but in general they seem like decent guys. 

He leaves a note on the whiteboard on his door that he’s on duty on the Tuesday following Natasha’s shitty pep talk. A perk of being a head RA: Steve sets the duty partners and the duty schedules. Sam is his duty partner for the semester. 

Steve finds the silence in his room before going on the duty round unfamiliar. He always had someone in his room before duty. That someone was usually Bucky. Sometimes, if Peggy wasn’t on that night, or even if she was, she’d hang out with him, too. Having someone there to be with between rounds made the late nights a little more bearable. It gave him an excuse to watch a movie or TV show instead of study, to take a goddamned break, as Bucky always reminded him. 

Sam has a life. And a boyfriend. And a psychology and sociology double major to finish. 

They meet outside Sam’s room since Lee is where the freshman quad duty round starts. At this point, two seniors on duty in the freshman area sounds like a setup to a bad joke, even if they’re Sam and Steve. They check bathrooms and lounges, loudly announcing their presence just in case (it’s still early in the year, and kids can be dumb). They work their way through the halls, all relatively silent for a Tuesday evening. Some signs of life, yes, but almost too quiet.

“Man, you’re always looking for trouble,” Sam complains when Steve voices these thoughts. “Just take the quiet duty night for what it is, okay? God. Do you want to write someone up on a Tuesday?”

“Of course not,” Steve says. “I just was noticing.”

“Uh huh,” Sam says. “Nat said you were being weird this weekend.”

“I’m fine.”

“You talk to Barnes yet?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that? He could come talk to me.” Sam shakes his head at him. “What?”

“I swear for someone who’s like, the best RA in all of human history, you’re kind of the most clueless. You make Cher Horowitz look capable.” 

“What am I supposed to do, go knock on his door and demand we talk?”

“Maybe don’t demand it. Ask if he wants to go for coffee or something. Just be nice. He’s having a hard time.”

***

_ Duty Log _

_ Filed by: Sam Wilson _

_ The first round through the Freshman Quad was quiet. RA Rogers commented on this, questioning whether or not the RAs On Duty should be concerned by this. RA Wilson reminded RA Rogers that it’s Tuesday. RA Rogers has forgotten all about weeknight duty rounds, as he spent all of last year dancing through Europe looking at art. RA Wilson did not. RA Wilson remembers. _

_ The bathroom on 3rd floor Goodman is gross. RA S. Carter was notified.  _

***

Bucky is living in the Simon suites. Those are usually triples at the very least. Not that Steve doesn’t think he doesn’t have friends, but he truly cannot think of anyone who Bucky would live with. 

Halfway through their freshman year, Bucky signed up to join the volunteer firefighters because he was thinking about maybe majoring in science and getting a job in the medical world after college. The firehouse was also headquarters to the EMTs for the campus and town surrounding the college, and a good amount of the volunteers were also EMTs. In the spring of that year, Bucky was asked if he wanted to join the EMTs. He accepted, and was guaranteed housing with them for the following year.

The volunteer firefighters and EMTs all live in the dorms above the firehouse. They skip the housing lottery entirely, guaranteed a room above the station for the next year. Any leftover rooms (usually one or two) get folded into the housing lottery and go to seniors with high lottery numbers. Bucky would have gotten a room before the lottery, if he was an EMT again. But, if he’d quit, like Sam had told him, then he wouldn’t have a guaranteed room. Which means he would’ve had to go into the lottery. But, all of his friends are either RAs or EMTs or firefighters and wouldn’t need a roommate, or even go through the lottery. 

Their college is small, small enough that everyone sort of knows everyone. It’s possible that Bucky just found someone looking to fill the last spot in their apartment and latched on for the ride, or even was found by a group with bad numbers who rode on his number into the apartment. Something turns in Steve’s stomach at the thought of Bucky getting used like that but it’s such a small thing, he tells himself as he approaches the apartment’s door. There are worse things a person could get used for, than a housing lottery number.

The brunette girl that had been with Peggy and Bucky answers the door.

“Heya, Steve! How’s it going?” she asks.

“Angie, right? Hi. Um,” Steve starts. She opens the door wider. 

“C’mon in.”

“I’m looking for Bucky? I’m not sure I have the right apartment, Sam gave me the number, but --”

“Nope, you’re in the right place,” she says, opening the door wider still. She stares at him, waiting. “Come on.”

Steve enters, and Angie closes the door behind him and leads him into the common area of the apartment.

“Peggy said you’d probably be by at some point. Bucky’s upstairs. I can go get him if you want.” She turns and looks at him suddenly. “You have to promise to be gentle.”

“Excuse me?”

“He is in an extraordinarily delicate headspace at the moment. I’m sure you know. But as his roommate I feel like I have to warn you.”

“He’s my best friend!”

“You were gone for a year,” she reminds him. “Between me and Peggy and your other friends, we’ve done our best. He’s not the same.”

“Look, Angie, we don’t really know each other but Bucky and I have been friends literally since before you were born, probably --”

“I’m nineteen!” Steve raises an eyebrow at her. “You’ve really known him that long?”

“I think I know Bucky better than you, is my point.”

“Don’t hold your breath.” Steve jolts. Angie leans to look around Steve, and grins. 

“Hey, Bucky,” she says. Steve turns around to see him. He’s wearing that hoodie again, with his hands stuck in his pockets. His long hair is scraped back into a messy knot. He’s still stubbly, really past the point of being “fashionable” but not long enough to be a beard. 

“Ange, you wanna scoot?” Bucky says to her. She nods. 

“I’ll be upstairs.”

She leaves. Steve and Bucky stand there, looking at each other. 

“She’s a junior?”

“Sophomore. She was Peg’s last year,” Bucky says. His hands are still in his pockets. There’s something odd about his left arm, though, the way it hangs. His right fist clenches in the pocket and Steve realizes he’s staring.

“Who else lives here?”

“It’s just us two,” Bucky says. “I told Angie if she wanted to bring a friend with her she could but.” He shrugs. “Fury was really good about it.”

“Really?” Nick Fury runs ResLife like a well-oiled machine. Steve finds it hard to believe that he’d let something like an underfilled apartment slide.

“Given the circumstances, I guess.”

“Yeah, about that,” Steve says. Bucky looks at him and then back at the spot on the ground near his shoes. “What happened? Why’d you quit the firehouse?”

“Wanted to focus more on school stuff this year.”

“Oh, so did you figure out what you wanna do?” Bucky doesn’t respond. “Buck, c’mon.” Steve reaches out to touch him -- just a hand on his shoulder, a motion that became shorthand for  _ I’m here for you, let me help  _ over the years -- and Bucky flinches away. “What’s wrong?” 

“Please, just don’t,” Bucky says, more to the ground than to him. Steve almost misses it but Bucky’s slightly diagonal so he’s closer to Steve’s good ear. Steve adjusts the volume on his hearing aid and drops his other hand.

“Okay. But, can you just -- Buck, what happened? I heard from you one day and then the next it was radio silence. No one would tell me where you went, if you went anywhere, and then I get home and you’re in Indiana all summer, and I had to find out from my  _ mom _ .”

“Sarah ain’t so bad,” Bucky says quietly, and Steve can see that he’s almost smirking.

“That’s not the point!” The almost-smirk disappears. “I thought I was your best friend.”

“You are,” Bucky says, looking up suddenly. “I wanted to tell you, Stevie, but I just -- it got messy.”

“Too messy for me?”

“Too messy to explain,” Bucky says, and then he releases a frustrated breath. “This was what was gonna happen.”

“What?”

“You weren’t gonna get it!”

“I don’t know what I’m not getting! You haven’t actually told me anything!”

They stare at each other. Parts of Bucky’s ponytail have fallen out around his face now. If he didn’t look exhausted and so disheveled, he might look attractive. Huh. 

“Look, why don’t we sit, and we can talk?” Steve suggests. “Buck, I just wanna talk to my best friend again.” Bucky looks down, almost guilty.

“Yeah, okay,” Bucky agrees, going to sit on the couch. Steve crosses to join him, and Bucky automatically shrinks away when Steve sits down.

“Am I too close?” Steve asks.

“Sorry,” Bucky replies, but doesn’t move.

“I can sit over there.” Steve nods to the loveseat next to the couch.

“You’re fine.”

“You’re practically on the armrest, Buck.”

“I said you’re fine,” Bucky says, suddenly sharp. Steve holds his hands up in surrender. Bucky looks at the pockets of his hoodie. “Got your ear in?”

“Of course.”

“Good.”

“Peg asked me that, too,” Steve says. “Guess you’ve been spending a lot of time with her, huh.”

“Last time she saw you, you forgot to wear it all the time,” Bucky replies. “Or did you forget that.”

“I didn’t forget all the time.”

“Rogers, we were lucky if you wore it more’n three days in a row.” Steve can’t help the smile that breaks out across his face. It’s the most Bucky’s sounded like himself in all the instances they’ve been around each other since classes started again.

“I had to wear it abroad. No one knew ASL.” There were the beginnings of a smile on Bucky’s face before Steve said that. Now, his face is blank. When he looks at Steve, it’s under eyebrows that are just barely drawn together, the lightest crease between them just above the bridge of his nose. Steve wants to reach out and smooth it with his thumb. That's new.

“Lucky us, that you developed that habit,” Bucky says. He tries to smile but it’s tight-lipped, like he’s in pain. 

“Are you okay?” Steve asks. “Because Everyone keeps telling me to be careful and patient and give you a lot of slack even though you ghosted me for eight months but I don’t know how much is enough because I don’t know what happened. Did I say something?” It’s the first time he’s asked this, but not even close to the first time the thought has crossed him. 

Because what if he _did_ say something? What if Steve’s emails and texts and photos sent across continents were too much for Bucky? What if Bucky thought Steve was rubbing his abroad experience in his face? Steve’s read over all of the last emails and texts a hundred times, easily. He doesn’t think they’re condescending or offensive or anything like that. In fact, most of them have some variation of “I wish you were here” in nearly every paragraph. 

But what if that was the problem? What if Bucky thought Steve was trying to guilt-trip him about staying while Steve went off and explored the world?

But Bucky looks stricken, even worse than his new resting face is.

“No, of course not,” he says, quickly, but without the bite from before. “God, Stevie, no.”

“Then what? What happened? It can’t be so bad, can it?” Every time Steve thinks he can’t look any guiltier, Bucky proves him wrong. 

“I had a bad few weeks, beginning of last semester,” Bucky starts, hesitant and not making eye contact. “It, um. It kinda reset everything and I spent a lot of time rebuilding.”

“Tony said you weren’t in a lab this semester,” Steve says. 

“Dropped physics. Kept English, though, so I can still graduate,” Bucky says and Steve thinks that might have been an attempt at a joke but it doesn’t land.

“What about grad school?”

“I was never gonna go straight into it anyway.”

“But now you can’t go at all.” 

“Plans change,” Bucky replies and Steve doesn’t have a response to that. He does, however, have a question.

“Why are you distracting me?”

“I’m not.”

“I asked you what happened and you didn’t answer.”

“Well, you jumped onto a new topic, so forgive me for going with the conversation.”

“You said you had to rebuild everything, and I figured that probably had something to do with the fact that you’re not taking any physics this semester.”

“And you were right! Congratulations.” Every word is barely-contained anger and Steve doesn’t know what to do. Bucky, Bucky who he grew up with and told every secret, was not an angry person. 

_ I want to know what’s wrong so I can help _ , Steve signs. Bucky watches his hands out of the corner of his eye. They grew up signing together, before Sarah had saved up enough to get Steve a better hearing aid than the cheap, ill-fitting one their insurance paid for. Bucky learned in time with Steve, and got so good that he could act as interpreter in class when Steve’s attention lapsed and he couldn’t quite hear. And signing was, sometimes, easier for them, if whatever they needed to say wasn’t actually spoken.

“Of course you do,” Bucky mutters, looking away from Steve’s hands. “Look, maybe, for once, you can’t help, okay?” 

“I can’t if you won’t let me,” Steve replies.

“God, it’s even worse when you’re actually saying it,” Bucky says, his hand finally leaving his pocket to run through the tendrils of hair that have fallen out of the bun since Steve first saw him. 

“What?”

“Your whole here-to-help schtick, it’s like,” Bucky looks at his hand suddenly, as if he’s just realized it’s left his pocket, and he shoves it back in. “You can’t help, and I don’t want you to try, okay? So just drop it.”

“I can’t do that,” Steve says. “Buck, whatever happened that’s got you so -- like this, clearly, you’re not okay, so would you just let me --” He’s reached out as he’s been talking, hoping Bucky will finally let him touch him. Bucky doesn’t see Steve’s outstretched hand and is too late in flinching away. 

His left sleeve is empty.

“Bucky?”

“I think you should go,” Bucky says, carefully reaching around with his right hand and plucking the empty sleeve out of Steve’s grasp.

“What happened to your arm?”

“Don’t have it anymore. Please leave.” He’s standing up, moving, quick and sharp, across the common area and to the door. He wrenches it open and waits, not looking at Steve. Steve gets up and crosses to the door. He stops in the doorway and looks at Bucky, who’s focused on the floor between his bare feet.

“Text me. If you...if you want.”


	3. Chapter 3

Understandably, he goes to Natasha’s room.

Natasha is in one of the upperclassmen dorms, not terribly far from the Simons. It’s perfect for her -- she can be as aloof as she wants, but at the same time, she can announce her presence with a quick trip to the bathroom and a quick conversation in the hall with a resident. She rules her hall with a quiet, graceful sort of iron will. 

Besides, he knows she’s there. He’d told both Sam and Natasha that he was going to try and talk to Bucky. They seemed happy with the idea, or at the very least, they were appeased by it. And he knows both of them, knows that they would be waiting around to hear how it went. But Natasha is closer and Steve needs to lose it just a little bit.

“Why the  _ fuck _ didn’t anyone tell me?” Steve demands as soon as Nat has her door open. 

“Well, hello to you, too,” she says, opening the door wider as Steve pushes his way in. She closes it gently behind him and turns, facing him.

“He’s not -- what the hell happened to his arm?” She raises an eyebrow.

“You’re  _ just _ asking this now?”

“No one told me he lost his arm!” 

“Oh my god, you didn’t know.”

“How was I supposed to know?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe look at his damn left side? Steve, what the fuck.”

“I’ve only seen him twice and he’s been wearing that hoodie every time!”

“Don’t you know what an empty sleeve looks like? Jesus Christ.” Nat holds her face in one hand. “What did you do.”

“Nothing!”

“Really? You were completely calm and collected and then you ran screaming to me?” Steve looks away. “Yeah. Great. Okay.” She crosses her room and grabs her phone off her desk and starts texting.

“Who are you texting?”

“Angie.”

“Why is he living with her?”

“Peggy set it up. She was her RA last year.” Her phone buzzes in her hand and she seems satisfied with whatever response Angie sent, so she texts back something quick and sets her phone down on her bed. She looks at Steve now, arms crossed. “You really are an idiot.”

“A little warning would’ve been nice.”

“I’m sure. Too bad.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why is he so... _ afraid _ of me?” She gives him a look at that. “I’m running out of vocabulary here, Nat. He’s, like, skittish around me or something.” Natasha looks off to the side.

“What happened last winter was a lot, for everyone. Bucky went through a lot and the fact that he came back to school at all is a feat in itself. The fact that he’s going to graduate, at least has plans to, is impressive.”

“He’s not in physics anymore.”

“He and Tony talked for a long time about that. It was the best decision he could’ve made for himself.” When she sees the frown creasing Steve’s forehead, she continues: “Remember how stressed out he was in the fall? I would sit next to him while he texted you. All of them were him whining about his workload and how much sleep he wasn’t getting.”

“He kept the English major because it was fun for him, he wasn’t gonna do anything with it.”

“Well, now he’s got a minor in physics and a major in English and he’s probably gonna live with his sister for a while after graduation.”

“What? Why?” Becca moved to Indianapolis over the summer. Indianapolis is just over seven hundred miles from New York, or eleven hours in a car, or two hours on a plane. Indianapolis is too far.

“His little sisters are still at home and he wants to find his own space after he graduates. It’s a goal for him. Peggy says he’s doing much better, too.” She gives him a meaningful look. Steve nods.

***

Steve meets with Phil once a week to talk about the freshman dorms and the RAs he oversees. Pepper and Rhodey also come. Pepper is the head RA for the apartments and suites, and Rhodey is in charge of the upperclassman dorms, so their jobs tend to be more damage control with regards to illegal parties, not so much the crisis management and homesickness that most freshman RAs deal with.

Towards the end of the meeting, Phil opens up the meeting for them to talk about any issues that their areas have that they want to bounce off of the others, maybe get feedback on how they handled it or suggestions for how to address it. The conversation usually devolves into complaining about residents or certain RAs but sometimes it can be helpful. 

“Peggy reported something to me earlier in the week,” Pepper says as soon as Phil has opened it up. “About her double in the Simons.”

“Bucky’s suite?” Steve asks. Pepper looks over at him. “I was there last week.”

“Her residents missed three classes last week,” Pepper continues. “One of them has been by to see her to talk about her roommate but between the two of them, they’re struggling to connect with the roommate about what’s going on. He had a rough year -- you remember.” Phil nods.

“What’s exactly the situation?” Rhodey asks.

“He won’t leave the apartment. The resident who went to Peggy says she knows he’s eating, because her leftovers in the fridge keep going missing, but she hasn’t seen him outside his room since last Tuesday.” Last Tuesday. When Steve went to see him.

“He’s been seeing someone at the counseling center, correct?”

“He has a standing appointment with Dr. Cho every Monday and Thursday. He missed the last two.”

“Is he considered at risk?” Phil asks.

“No,” Pepper says. At risk? Since when would Bucky be considered “at risk”? Steve opens his mouth to ask, but Phil presses on.

“Has he been turning in work from his room?”

“Peggy’s emailed his professors, apparently he’s emailed them all and turned in anything that needed turning in, either via the moodle or email.”

“Has she gone to see Bucky?” Steve asks.

“He won’t speak to her,” Pepper says.

“Sure she loves that,” Steve mutters. Pepper gives him a look.

“What about you?” Rhodey asks.

“Well, that was my question. Should I go in?”

“Give Peggy one more shot at him, and then you try. Their housing arrangement was deliberate and she knows how to communicate with him,” Phil says. “Unless either of you feel different?” Rhodey shrugs. 

“Might snap him out of it. Could make it worse if you come in as ResLife’s attack dog, though,” he says.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “Give Peg another chance at it. She was always good at getting people to do what she wants them to.”

***

Steve watches his friends for a few days. Watches them come and go, when they respond to text messages rather than just glancing at them on their lock screens. He listens for their excuses for getting up, if they’re valid or just excuses. He’s looking for a sign that Bucky is falling apart further than what Pepper described in the meeting, but a week later he finds himself at lunch with Natasha and Sam and Peggy and Angie sit down at the table with them, seemingly out of nowhere. Peggy plucks the coffee cup off Angie’s table and takes a sip of it, leaving an imprint of her red lipstick on it. Once upon a time, that used to bother the shit out of Steve.

“Long night?” Sam asks. 

“Duty rounds in the apartment complexes are the worst,” Peggy says, or at least, that’s what Steve thinks she said. It got a little garbled between being across the table and --

“Steve forgot his hearing aid this morning, so you’ll have to sign,” Nat says, signing along to what she says. She’s on Sam’s other side, and Sam is sitting on his right, which is his good ear, so she’s easy enough to hear, but the dining hall is filling up with the post-morning class lunch rush and the high vaulted ceilings make for great acoustics for the cacophony that isn’t that great even when he remembers to wear his hearing aid. 

“For god’s sake, Steve,” Peggy says, but she signs along, and it’s nice, in a weird nostalgic way to see her manicured fingers, exasperated, shaping his name sign. 

He decided, while abroad, that he did not miss Peggy in the way that one might think. She was his first real relationship, the first person, aside from Bucky, who looked at him and didn’t pity him. Nat and Sam and all of them came early sophomore year, after he and Peggy started dating, so she would always be the first. And that’s why, Steve thinks, Peggy will always be important to him and even if she hadn’t made the first move to apologize, Steve would’ve accepted and apologized in return. Watching her sign, even when she’s annoyed, will always comfort him at least a little.

Angie, as it turns out, also knows ASL and keeps up with the conversation almost better than Peggy, who still seems a little out of practice. Steve watches as she signs. Some of her vocabulary is different but that might just be her growing up and learning different signs based on the vernacular of her region. He can figure out the ones that are really different, based on context, for the most part. 

“Where’d you learn?” Steve asks after a lull in the conversation.

“Deaf uncle. Everyone picked it up for him,” she says. “Did you teach Bucky?” Steve sees Natasha look over at her, like the question has the potential to be offensive or something. It’s not, though, just a little out of nowhere.

“No, we learned it together. My ma had a friend from the hospital who knew ASL and would watch us after school. Ma wanted me to know it because she wasn’t sure I’d get a hearing aid for a while growing up.”

“You sign the same. The rhythm or something, I’m not sure,” she says. Peggy looks over.

“It’s why I can never keep up with anyone aside from them,” she tells Angie. “They practically have their own language.”

“Nah, their grammar’s just shot to hell,” Sam says. 

“Some of us didn’t learn ASL in a class,” Steve replies, nudging him, and Sam just grins at that. Steve turns back to Angie. “Bucky’s signing a lot?”

Angie and Peggy exchange a look. 

“With some modifications,” Nat says easily. “Sometimes that’s easier, though.”

Steve knows that, of course. He’s read all about the benefits of sign language for people who have gone through traumatic events and sometimes end up nonverbal for periods of time. He and Bucky did a whole project about it for their community service module in high school. He also knows how much easier it can be when you’re tired and you’ve forgotten your hearing aid and you just have to make it to the end of the day. He just didn’t realize that applied to Bucky, too. 

***

Steve would like to believe that he spent all of his free time trying to reconnect with Bucky, but he’d be lying to himself. Towards the end of September, the workload came in a tidal wave, with proposals and papers and reports piling up on his desk and in his studio. He’d never been the kind of student to pull all-nighters, but duty nights became close to it.

So he finds himself, in early October, having only seen Bucky a handful of times and Bucky has not spoken to him at any of those instances unless Steve said something first. 

Aside from the whole Bucky using ASL on his own because of -- trauma? Exhaustion? --  _ whatever _ revelation, there hasn’t been really any new information. Everyone keeps insisting that it come from Bucky himself, even Tony, who is known on campus for being the biggest gossip with the most dirt on faculty, administration, and students. But after trying to talk to him in his apartment, Steve’s not sure Bucky wants to tell him anything. And, logically, he should respect that. Bucky’s his own person. Just because they’ve been joined at the hip since they were five doesn’t mean that he’s not allowed to keep stuff to himself. 

Still, Steve can’t leave a bad situation (even a perceived one that he really has no clue about) alone. Especially since whatever happened left his best friend selectively mute (maybe? He needs to ask Nat about that) and without an arm.

So, understandably, he goes to the firehouse.

Being an RA and having Bucky Barnes as a best friend means that Steve is pretty familiar with a good amount of the EMTs that work there. Bucky lived with Tim Dugan his sophomore and junior years, and they lived above the firehouse with their other EMT friends. Steve is friendly with all of them, or he  _ was _ , before he went abroad. Morita at least acknowledges Steve in the dining hall.

He’s in the garage of the firehouse and a younger girl -- she could be a freshman or a junior -- comes up to him, sleeves rolled up and holding a wrench.

“You looking for someone?” she asks.

“Is Dugan around?” Steve asks. 

“Yeah, he’s in the lounge upstairs, do you need me to show you?”

“No, I got it. Thanks,” he says, looking at the name embroidered onto her half-zip, “Chavez.” She smirks and turns back to the truck she was working on.

Steve goes up to the lounge and finds all of the EMTs Bucky had been friends with (Dugan, Dernier, Gabe, Morita, and Other James). The conversation dies when they see him.

“Steve,” Gabe says first. “You got big.”

“S’what they keep telling me,” Steve says, and Gabe grins, even if it’s not quite the same as it would have been before. 

“You did, though. How was my home country?” Dernier, the French guy that joined the firehouse their sophomore year, asks.

“Rainy, in the spring.” Dernier seems appeased by this answer. “Dugan.” Dugan looks at him, finally. “How was your summer?”

“Great. Good being home, y’know?” he says. He looks physically pained by talking to Steve. Steve nods once. “It’s about Barnes, right.”

“No one’s telling me anything and it’s getting really old,” Steve tells them. 

“So you’re snooping,” James Falsworth, also known as “Other James,” says. 

“Bucky’s not an EMT anymore. He doesn’t own you guys.”

“No, but he’s our brother, too,” Dugan says. “If he doesn’t want you knowing something, maybe you oughtta leave it alone.”

“Not at his own expense.”

“You should back off,” Morita tells him. “Look, we care about Barnes just as much as you do.”

“We know last semester was hard on him,” Gabe says.

“It was hard on everyone,” Dernier says. “But Barnes got fucked over especially.”

“We can’t really talk about it,” Dugan says, firmly, without room for discussion from either side. “Look, Steve, we like you a lot and we appreciate that you wanna help Barnes, but you’d better just let him come to you, okay? And don’t come asking us about him again.”

“Legally, we can’t talk about it,” Morita says, and he’s met with four glares. “Oh come on. He doesn’t know  _ why _ we can’t talk about it.”

“If he decides to, Barnes will tell you. He’s allowed to,” Dugan says. “We are not, so we will not. Don’t put us in an awkward situation. Barnes’ll definitely never tell you if you do.”

***

His one-on-one meeting with Phil is the next day. He goes in and they go through the checklist of the freshman RAs, how the halls are doing, how Steve’s hall is doing in particular. They run through program ideas and as the conversation winds down, Steve figures, fuck it. It’s the last resource he  _ hasn’t _ tried.

“Phil, what happened with Bucky?” he asks. Phil, to his credit, keeps his face carefully neutral.

“Why do you ask?” 

“No one will tell me anything. Some of his friends who are still EMTs told me they legally can’t talk about it.”

“Well, they’re correct about that. It’s up to Bucky whether he tells you or not.”

“But I know Natasha and Peggy and Sam know.”

“It’s not their place to tell you.”

“Yeah, they keep telling me that.” Steve looks at the carpet. “I just want my best friend back.”

“I know it’s hard,” Phil says. “It was a big discussion last semester in the administration. I was part of those meetings and I know that the decision wasn’t easy for anyone. But after he came back to campus and he and the dean figured out how he could graduate on time, it became clear that we had to let him decide what he wanted.”

“What was that?”

“He wanted to be left alone,” Phil tells him. “I think, in part, the situation was embarrassing to him. Peggy’s told me he’s gotten a lot better since last semester. She says that she thinks he misses you, too, Steve. Don’t give up yet.”

Easy words for Phil, Steve thinks as he pulls his hood up against the rain -- early October showers, smothering the summer heat and giving way to the fall. He used to hate winter -- it always made his lungs hurt more, but ever since getting big Steve hasn’t had as many asthma attacks. Maybe that trend will continue into the winter. 


	4. Chapter 4

Steve has an asthma attack the following Monday. Because why not.

It’s not even close to the worst one he’s ever had, but ever since he got big they’ve been fewer and farther between, wheezing during workouts notwithstanding. A full on attack hasn’t happened since -- God, he doesn’t even remember. 

Clint is with him and Clint finds the inhaler in Steve’s backpack -- he hasn’t carried one in his pocket since before the summer -- and uncaps it and gets it into his hand. Steve manages a quick  _ thank you _ with his left hand as he catches his breath. 

“Is he all right?” It’s Peggy. Steve knows he’s red in the face and still not breathing great and the fact that he’s sort of hunched over on the bench they stopped at isn’t great either. Because why not just add to this Monday, he thinks. The universe is having a blast making his senior year weird enough anyway.

“He’s fine. Pollen, I think,” Clint says, hands keeping up. 

“They mowed the grass,” Steve says. He signs one-handed in case they can’t understand him through his heavy breathing, and the fact that Clint probably can’t see his mouth enough to read his lips.

“Have you been to see Bucky, Steve?” Peggy asks, and Steve can hear the expectation of the answer she already knows behind the question.

“Why?” Steve asks, taking the cap from Clint and sitting up, starting to put his inhaler back in his backpack.

“You should really keep that in your pocket, you’ll probably need it again in a few hours,” Peggy tells him and Steve continues putting it away. “That’s not a proper answer.”

“No, I haven’t. We don’t seem to get anywhere. Hasn’t he told you?”

“Yes. He’s told me you’re quite insufferable, and while normally I’d agree with him, I think you both need to talk about your feelings because Lord knows you didn’t do that enough growing up,” she says. Her signing’s gotten better since the summer when they first got back, Steve notices. Clint looks like he really wants to laugh, which means he can understand enough to know that Peggy is chewing him out. 

“I don’t really see how my feelings are any of your business,” Steve says and then immediately regrets it.

“Frankly, Steven, they’re not, but Bucky’s are. I’ve had enough of you both ignoring each other. It’s not good for him, or you, and you both need each other. He needs you.” Her face is set, jaw tight. 

“Fine. I’ll talk to him again.”

“My apartment. Tomorrow afternoon,” she says crisply. Steve nods. She seems appeased with this, and signs a quick  _ goodbye  _ to Clint and leaves.

“Wow. Was she always like that?” Clint asks, sitting down on the bench next to Steve. 

“Duty rounds with her were a trip,” Steve nods. “But at least she’s looking out for Bucky. I’m glad it’s her. He needs someone like that.” Clint makes a face at him. “What?”

“Do you think they, that they’re,” but then he stops, and instead presses his fists together, thumbs tucked against the side of his hand and facing up, shaking them as he signs  _ together? _

“You mean they’re not?” Clint snorts, desperately trying to hold back even more laughter.

“Nat’s gonna  _ love _ this.”

***

Steve shows up at Peggy’s apartment the next day. Angie answers the door, smirking at him.

“Come on in,” she says. “Peggy’s upstairs, she’ll be down in a sec.”

Bucky is already on the couch, wearing the hoodie Steve’s starting to think he never takes off. His hair is down today, and he looks at Steve through the longer pieces that hang in his face. His face is clean-shaven, though, which is a step up from the last time Steve saw him. His mouth twitches, like he wants to smile. 

Peggy comes downstairs, dressed remarkably casually for her. Angie hands her a pair of boots and she starts lacing them up, sitting on the stairs.

“Angie and I are going for a hike off-campus. We’ll be gone a couple hours at least. Sort yourselves before we get back,” she instructs.

“Since when do you hike?” Steve asks.

“Since my girlfriend took me last semester,” Peggy says primly. “Honestly, Steven. I didn’t think you were that clueless.” She takes Angie’s hand and they leave the apartment together. Once the door is closed, Steve looks over at Bucky, who’s curled into the corner of the couch, but smiling, slightly.

“Clint made sure everyone knew within about twenty minutes,” he says. 

“What was I supposed to think? I came back and she said she was seeing someone and then you both walk up together and last I checked you didn’t like each other sophomore year, and --”

“Stevie, chill out,” Bucky says. “I know why you thought it. Doesn’t mean it’s not hilarious, though.” He looks at the shitty glued-down carpeting. “I didn’t like her sophomore year. But she was really great last semester. And this one, too.”

“She’s good at reminding you about your self-worth,” Steve nods.

“And reminding you when you’re a selfish prick,” Bucky mutters. Steve huffs a laugh.

“Peggy wants us to figure out our shit.”

“Not much to figure out. She wants me to talk to you about my feelings and she wants me to hear about yours,” Bucky says. 

“Do you wanna go first or do you want me to?”

“Let me. I think I know what you’re gonna say already,” he looks up at Steve, chewing on his bottom lip. “Can you sit?”

“Sure.” Steve sits on the opposite end of the couch, trying to not be so huge compared to Bucky. Not that Bucky’s small, though, he’s just so skinny. Steve realizes he hasn’t seen him in the dining hall once this semester.

“I took six weeks off last semester. Late January into early March. I spent spring break catching up on work. I had meetings with the dean for like, three weeks straight figuring out if I could still graduate in May, assuming I didn’t miss any more class as significantly.” Bucky’s sentences are stilted, more time than would be normal between each one. “I had to take the time off for the surgery and then the rehab. They -- my parents wanted me to take more time off, so I could do more PT and get fitted for a prosthetic, but I didn’t want to miss any more school.”

“Why’d you lose your arm?”

“House fire went bad,” Bucky says shortly. “I got pinned. By the time they got me out everything below the elbow was dead. And then, when they got me on the operating table, everything else was too damaged to fix.” 

“I talked to Dugan, and the others,” Steve says carefully. Bucky looks away. “They wouldn’t tell me anything. Said it was a legal issue.”

“We, um. They hired a new fire chief last year. Guy named Alex Pierce. Turned out he was making a lot of decisions based on money, dumb shit. He was pocketing donations and some of the funding from the administration and as a result, we weren’t always getting our equipment, and we couldn’t do our jobs properly, especially in more pressing emergencies.” He shifts uncomfortably, his hand going up to where what must be the stump of his arm ends. “A lot of people ended up getting hurt. To the point where, it was really suspicious.”

“Is everyone gonna have to appear in court or something?” Steve asks. Bucky shakes his head.

“We all had to sign agreements that we wouldn’t talk about it until after the trial ended. Didn’t wanna incite mass hysteria on campus or something,” he says. He laughs once, not a happy sound. “I think most people know. You remember that guy in the year ahead of us, Rumlow?”

“Sure.”

“Expelled. Apparently he knew enough that he could’ve done something but didn’t. Same thing happened to his buddy Jack Rollins.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Nah. They didn’t tell us anything. I think Pierce was using Rumlow and Rollins anyway. Like, if they knew, he was gonna make sure they got dragged down with him,” Bucky says. “’Course, when we found out, it all made sense. They took testimonies from everyone about the changes since Pierce came on. That’s why we can’t talk about it.” He looks up from the carpet suddenly, frowning. “Well.  _ They _ can’t. I can, since I’m not at the firehouse anymore. The administration asked me to keep my mouth shut.”

“Are you going to?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Bucky says. Steve nods. Bucky doesn’t continue.

“Why didn’t you feel like you could tell me what happened?” Bucky slumps further into the corner of the couch he’s nestled in. “Buck.”

“People died, Stevie,” he says. “People died and I -- it was my job to make sure they didn’t and I failed and they died. Part of the case is deciding if Pierce have any responsibility in their deaths. And, if he’s not, then it’s on me. I’m the one who killed them.”

Bucky takes a deep shuddering breath but doesn’t go on. They sit there, in the silence, not moving. Bucky’s been telling most of the story to his feet, which are resting on the couch, his knees pulled up to his chin. Carefully, slow enough that Bucky can see and stop him if he needs to, Steve reaches out and puts a hand on Bucky’s knee. Bucky looks up at him.

Bucky always had a guilty conscience. Sarah always said it was the combination of being a literal golden child, plus the Irish blood, plus the Catholic upbringing (she always made a point to apologize to Steve for his own whenever the topic was brought up) that did him in. Bucky felt guilty, and still does. Steve can read between the lines. Bucky’s half-expecting Steve to confirm his guilt. 

“Thank you. For telling me what happened. How can -- what do you, I mean, if I can, what can I do?” Steve asks. Bucky searches his face. His mouth is pressed into a thin line. And then he slowly reaches out with his one arm and wraps it carefully around Steve’s shoulders, burying his face in the collar of Steve’s henley. 

It’s the first touch Bucky’s initiated since Steve got back. 

***

They sort of fall back into their old rhythm after Bucky tells Steve about what happened. Only sort of. 

Bucky avoids a lot of the more public areas of campus if he can help it. It’s why Steve hasn’t seen him in the dining hall all semester, why he’s never with Peggy and Angie when they’re hanging out with the others. So they start slow. Steve goes to Bucky and Angie’s suite after class on Wednesdays, when he has a little bit of time and they’re both free. 

They’re a couple weeks into their tentative refriending, as Sam has delicately called it, when Steve leaves his phone unattended on Bucky’s couch while he goes to the bathroom. He comes back and Bucky’s flicking through something.

“Got a lotta messages on here, Rogers,” he says, smirking. Steve takes his phone back. Bucky’s going through Steve’s tinder messages. It’s a direct mirror of a scene two years ago. Bucky used to let Steve flick through his messages, help him decide if he actually wanted to meet up with the people he talked to. Steve was five-foot-four, barely a hundred pounds, and a hot mess of a human, medically speaking. No one was interested in dating him, except for Peggy. Most people assumed they weren’t dating anyway. 

“Traveling on your own and hauling an art trunk around does a body good, apparently,” Steve replies, closing out of the app. 

“Oh really?” Bucky says, leaning back on the armrest. “I didn’t notice. Finally hit that growth spurt.”

“I was here for that.”

“Well, yeah, but like, the rest of it,” Bucky makes a gesture with his elbow, his hand still kept in his pocket most of the time even now. “You’re stacked, Stevie.”

“Shuddup,” Steve says, plopping himself down on the couch next to him. “I recognized most of these people. They all go here and none of them woulda looked at me twice, a year ago.” 

“Their loss,” Bucky says. “Carter looked.”

“She only looked because I spilled my drink on her at a party.”

“And you stood up for that drunk girl to the football team,” Bucky reminds him. “Even though you almost got the shit kicked outta you, it was admirable.”

“You broke a knuckle and couldn’t be on call for six weeks helping me.”

“And she still picked you. Point, proven.” He nudges Steve with his elbow. 

Steve isn’t sure where this conversation came out of. Does Bucky want… what? Casual sex? Strangers messaging him with dick pics or propositions of a threesome? To be the “hot friend” again? If it’s the last one, Steve thinks, then maybe that’s coming from the “I have no arm, look how sad and pathetic I am as a result” place. Steve doesn’t really know how to address that. The conversations they’ve had about his missing arm have been nonexistent and to Steve, their relationship feels brand new. He doesn’t want to upset the delicate status quo they have. 

“Get lost up there?” Bucky is poking him. “Glad to see you didn’t lose all your brain cells in Europe.” Steve shoves at him and Bucky shoves back but he’s grinning like the little shit he’s always been and for a second things feel normal.

And then Bucky shifts and leans into Steve a little bit, grabbing his laptop off the coffee table and slowly typing in the password one-handed. He stays pressed up into Steve’s side as he opens Netflix and finds the show he’s been trying to get Steve to watch in his history. Steve moves his arm up and over the back of the couch, not really around Bucky’s shoulders, but Bucky shifts slightly into Steve so his hand isn’t near the stump. 

***

Steve is going on duty in an hour. 

But first, he’s getting a dressing-down from Sarah Rogers.

“I don’t care how deep into studio art hell you’ve fallen, you call once a week, Steven Grant Rogers,” she says instead of a greeting. He hasn’t called in nearly three.

“Sorry, Ma,” Steve manages to get in. Sarah keeps going.

“I should send Sam flowers. You know he’s been texting me once a day to tell me you’re alive.”

“I know, Ma.” Letting the two of them meet and become such good friends was the worst decision of Steve’s life.

“So if you had bothered to answer the phone the last couple weeks,” she says and Steve can hear her grinning across the line so she’s probably not as mad as she should be, “you’d know that Winifred called.”

“She did?”

“Yes. We got coffee last week. Becca loves Indianapolis, and Janie and Rachel are taking to middle and high school just fine.”

“We didn’t exactly leave them with great legacies.”

“In spite of that, Fred says they’re thriving,” Sarah says. “She asked if she could host Thanksgiving.”

“They always do,” Steve says, confused. 

“Well, she was worried because for a while it sounded like you and Bucky weren’t talking,” she says. “I said if you two hadn’t reconnected by the break we’d just have to lock you in the coat closet together before dinner.”

“We’re talking again,” Steve says. “I’ve been spending a lot of time at his suite, that’s why I haven’t been picking up.”

“That’s great! Did he explain why he disappeared for all that time?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Too complicated for the woman who used to give both of you baths?” she teases. 

“He was in a firefighting accident and it kinda ruined all of his plans,” Steve says. It’s technically true.

“Fred was telling me, he might go live with Becca for a while after graduating. Get a handle on his future.”

“Yeah, I heard that too,” Steve says, fidgeting with the nametag he’s already stuck to his shirt.

“You don’t like that idea one bit, do you?”

“Ma, it’s like, six hundred miles away and I feel like I just got him back, of course I don’t like it.” She tuts at him.

“Of course, don’t get all snippy with me. But it probably wouldn’t be permanent. City boys like you two can never stay away for long.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Fred said he lost his arm? How’s he doing without it?”

“Fine.”

“You’re gonna have to give me a little more than that,” she says, and he can hear her smile again. 

“I don’t know, Ma, he’s doing fine. I don’t think he’s happy.”

“No, Fred mentioned that too,” Sarah sighs. “You know him so well, Steve, I’m sure you can help him a little. He might not be happy for a while, but having you around, that’ll help immensely.”

***

_ Duty Log _

_ Filed by: Sam Wilson _

_ RA Wilson would like the record to show that RA Rogers got RA Wilson in a headlock at the start of duty as retaliation for RA Wilson’s communique with RA Rogers’ mother over the course of the last couple weeks, as RA Rogers decided to drop off the face of the planet, according to Ms. Rogers. RA Wilson does not deserve this. RA Wilson is a kind, thoughtful, handsome psych/soc major who is a better son to Sarah than Steve could ever hope to be.  _

_ Freshman halls quiet this evening. Bathroom in 3rd floor Goodman still gross. RA S. Carter, come on. _


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for dropping off the face of the earth! RA training got a little too real and I couldn't make time to get online. Here's the next chapter! They might be coming a little slower than before but I hope to have the whole fic up by next weekend.

Thanksgiving sneaks up on the campus and suddenly everyone has proposals, papers, projects, presentations, all due before they can go on break. Steve barely has time for his school work, what with the sudden onslaught of stressed freshmen knocking on his door at all hours. He also strongly suspects something is happening between Billy and Teddy that’s Not Quite Platonic, but neither have said anything and Steve won’t either.

Steve and Bucky make plans to go home together. Bucky seems like he is looking forward to the hour and a half together in transit. Since reconnecting, Bucky’s taken to writing in journals that he leaves all over -- his suite, Steve’s dorm room, Peggy’s suite, Tony’s off-campus apartment. He bought a four-pack from the campus bookstore, all the same identical red cover. Steve wonders how he can keep track of what he’s already written down if he has so many journals in so many different places, but he doesn’t ask. The creases around Bucky’s brow are becoming less and less prominent by the day, and the journaling seems to be helping. 

On the Friday before the break starts, Tony hosts a party in his apartment off-campus. Part of his getting sober, Steve finds out, is removing himself from the possibility of putting himself into toxic situations, which he identified as frat parties in therapy. Bruce lives with him, which allows for late-night brainstorming but also the potential for fire hazards and emergency room runs. Pepper tells Steve that she is thankful every morning when she wakes up in her on-campus suite, with her quiet roommates whom she adores and absolutely no chance of weird science in her common area.

So, by college student standards, the party sucks. There is absolutely no alcohol in Tony and Bruce’s apartment. Instead, a truly massive blender is set up on the breakfast bar with bowls of fruit and candy and cookies around it, with a gallon of vanilla ice cream next to that, with a note explaining that there’s milk in the fridge to liquefy the milkshakes, as well as non-dairy products for the evolutionarily inferior (with Pepper’s handwriting clarifying “lactose intolerant” written under that). 

Steve and Bucky showed up together and despite knowing everyone at the party, even knowing them well, Bucky stays close to Steve. It’s a bad day, apparently. Steve knows better than to comment, and he doesn’t. He makes them both oreo mint milkshakes and settles on the floor, leaning up against the couch, Natasha’s legs between their shoulders.

“So, who’s not getting a butterball this year?” Tony asks, his way of breaking the lull in conversation that settled when everyone seemed to remember their milkshakes at once. 

“I think the more apt question would be, who’s experiencing one for the first time?” Angie says, smirking at Peggy.

“You’re getting her to do Thanksgiving?” Steve asks, incredulous.

“I’ll be wearing a Union Jack like a cape the entire time,” Peggy says. “Angie’s parents insisted I come this year.”

“I didn’t shut up about you all last year,” Angie says, grinning dopily.

“Riley’s gonna experience a properly roasted bird this year,” Sam says. Riley rolls his eyes. 

“I’ve had roasted turkey, Samuel,” he says. 

“Nuh-uh. Not on Thanksgiving. You told me you deep fried your turkey.”

“Um, that sounds delicious. Hey, Nat, can we --”

“No, Clint,” Natasha says, cutting Clint off. “I’m Russian. We don’t eat turkeys. I’ll be having borscht and potatoes.”

“You’ve been here since you were four. You got naturalized sophomore year.”

“I’m not eating something that looks that much like a dinosaur,” she says, insistent. “Steve, what are you doing this year?”

“Bucky’s mom has claimed most of the cooking. She and my ma alternate who takes it each year.” 

“You missed your ma’s sweet potato casserole last year,” Bucky says quietly. It’s the first full sentence Steve’s heard from him today. 

“Yeah, well, your mom puts sausage in the stuffing, so I think we’ll be okay this year,” Steve says, looking at him. Bucky frowns slightly, dragging his straw through his cup. 

“Barnes, got any big plans?” Tony says.

“Going home. Staying out of the way for meal prep,” Bucky says shortly. 

But that’s wrong, Steve thinks to himself, later that night. Bucky never stayed out of the kitchen once in his life during Thanksgiving.

***

Sophomore year. Thanksgiving break. They were in the Barnes’ brownstone. Becca was home from college in Indianapolis, too. Steve sat at the counter, watching as Bucky and Becca bickered over the preparation of the stuffing, about whether or not Bucky had browned enough sausage for it. As Becca squawks at his dismissal of her argument, Bucky shoots Steve a shit-eating grin.

“That’s enough. If you’re under the age of thirty, get out of my kitchen,” Winifred said from the stove. “You, too, Steve.”

“Aw, c’mon, Mrs. B,” Steve said, but he got off the stool and left with Bucky and Becca anyway.

Mr. Barnes and Janie and Rachel, Bucky’s younger sisters, were sprawled across the couch and armchairs, watching football, already having been banished from the kitchen. Bucky dropped himself into the corner of the couch rather unceremoniously and Steve sat next to him. Becca poked at Janie until she scooted over to make room for her, too.

Steve tried to follow along with the game but his father hadn’t been much of a football fan when he was alive and frankly, Steve had gotten into too much trouble with the football team in high school to really invest in the sport like other people do. Instead, he looked over Bucky’s shoulder to see what Bucky was doing on his phone.

“Look at this,” Bucky said when he realized Steve was watching him scroll through instagram. “Can we try that when we get back to school?”

“With whose makeup?”

“Peggy’s, duh. C’mon, I’ll shave, I’ll do that weird skin routine Stark’s been going on and on about at parties so my face isn’t dry. You could totally do something like this.”

“I am not painting Van Gogh on your face.”

“You’re no fun. What about a nice Degas?”

“You want ballerinas on your face.” Bucky smirked at him. 

“Boys,” Mr. Barnes said warningly from the other end of the couch, but Steve saw the twitch of a grin under his mustache when he looked over. 

“You’ll earn major art student points if you do this,” Bucky said.

“No I won’t. I’ll get laughed out of my drawing seminar, for sure, though,” Steve replied. “Besides, you only wanna do this because you want a new Tinder photo and you think this’ll get you, like, hipsters or something.”

“You got my number, Stevie,” Bucky said, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pulling Steve to his chest. “I want you to make me all pretty and painted so that dumb guys in beanies and girls with like, razor sharp eyeliner will notice me.”

“Okay, we’re ready!” Steve managed to pry himself away from Bucky’s chest and sat up in time to see Sarah walking into the living room. “Turn it off, George, before your wife kills you.”

“Can’t have that, can we?” George said, nudging Janie. Rachel, who somehow had the remote but didn’t change the channel from football, turned off the TV and got up with the rest of them. They made their way into the dining room and took up the predetermined spots. As usual, Steve and Bucky were on opposite sides of the table. 

“Fred, grace?” George asked as everyone got settled at their seats. Winifred nodded, and everyone took hands. Steve kept his head tilted slightly up, as did Bucky, making eye contact and smirking through the prayer.

“Dear God, we thank you for the food we’ve prepared. We thank you for the hands that made it and helped make it, and we thank you for the friends and family with us today. We ask you to bless them, and to bless the friends and family that could not be with us, wherever they are, and we ask you to keep those whom you have already taken close to your heart. We ask this in your name, Jesus Christ, and in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” She was met with the chorus of “Amen.” Sarah squeezed Steve’s hand before letting go. 

Bucky permeated the conversation, laughing and teasing his sisters and smirking at Steve every time he was reprimanded, hands flying over his plate to sign snide comments about the adult conversation that Sarah would occasionally glare at him for. 

***

Bucky meets Steve at the train station at nine o’clock the next morning. His winter coat has the left arm pinned into the sleeve, but it looks fuller than his hoodie sleeve had. 

“Angie rolled up an old sweater,” Bucky says when he sees Steve staring. “It doesn’t flop around as much with it in there, apparently.”

“Where does she live?” 

“Maine. She has a car. She and Peggy left at seven.”

They walk into the station together and Steve buys the tickets for both of them. Bucky hands Steve ten dollars for coffee from the Dunkin Donuts in the station, even though he follows Steve over to the shop front. He seems surprised when Steve rattles off the coffee order without prompting. 

“I was only gone a year,” Steve teases when Bucky can’t seem to get the incredulous look off his face. “I didn’t forget how you take your coffee.” Bucky just shrugs.

It isn’t until they’re on the train that Bucky says something about it.

“This isn’t how I used to get it,” he says. Steve eyes him over the lip of the styrofoam cup’s lid. “Before. It used to be much sweeter.”

“We’ve gotten coffee since -- then,” Steve settles on the word. Then and Now. That’s how they talk about time, Then being before Bucky finally told Steve what happened. But Bucky is shaking his head, holding his coffee between his knees to tap his index and middle finger over his folded-in thumb to match his, “No.” 

“Then how’d I know?”

“You went on that run with Nat. She knew it.” Steve just shrugs. 

“Guess I just remembered.”

They fall silent until they pull into Grand Central. They get off and suddenly there are more people in one space than there ever is on campus and Bucky starts looking for exits, stiff and anxious. Steve puts a hand on his back, careful, not rough, and guides him through the station down to the subway.

“We can call a cab or an uber if you want,” Steve says as they approach the turnstiles. Bucky shakes his head.

“I can do this,” he says. 

They get on the express 7 train and it’s just one stop but it’s packed so they stay standing. Bucky hugs a little closer to Steve than he has before, facing in and leaning his forehead on Steve’s shoulder. Steve leaves his hand where it is on Bucky’s back. 

They get off and transfer to the F and they find two seats and settle in for the ride to Brooklyn. Being out in public like that is still draining for him. Steve lets him lean into him in their seats more than Bucky ever has in his life. They grew up sharing beds and baths and everything in between and physical contact wasn’t exactly something either of them shied away from with each other. 

Bucky pulls Steve by the arm when the train pulls into Carroll Street. Steve didn’t realize he fell asleep, and apparently neither did Bucky, but he pulls at him all the same and Steve stumbles off the train after him. Bucky keeps his grip on Steve’s arm as they walk, leaning in closer than usual, but Steve lets him be. He can feel Bucky’s body heat through the sleeve of his coat and it’s sort of comforting in a weird sort of way.

They get to Sarah’s apartment building and Steve fumbles with his keys until Bucky, rolling his eyes, produces his keyring out of his pocket and lets them into the building. 

“Why am I not surprised you have that.”

“Because I’m the son Sarah Rogers never had,” Bucky says over his shoulder as he calls the elevator.

Bucky opens the door to Sarah’s apartment as well.

“Boys?” 

“Hey, Ma,” Steve calls, closing the door behind them. She comes out wearing that godawful apron Steve painted on for her in second grade, a wooden spoon coated in  _ something _ in her hand.

“I swear, Steven, you’re bigger every time I see you. Come here.” He leans down to hug his mother, still not used to how tiny she is compared to him. 

She lets him go and Steve works on undressing all his winter gear. And then she turns on Bucky.

“And you, Mister Barnes,” she says. “Thank you for getting him home in one piece.”

“Anytime, Sarah,” he says, accepting her hug. She pauses as she lets him go, feeling the sleeve of his coat. “’S a sweater. Angie did it for me.” Sarah makes an impressed noise. 

“You should take that off, it’s so hot in here,” she says, turning back to the kitchen. “Steve, I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, shoes off in the house.”

***

The Barnes brownstone has always been one of the happiest places Steve goes to. Steve spent countless afternoons after school and weekend sleepovers and long summer days there, and even as a twenty-one-year-old college-almost-graduate it still feels like a second home. 

He and Sarah arrive around noon, just in time to see Santa riding in on his sleigh at the parade. Janie and Rachel jump up to hug him and George shakes his hand. Winifred fusses over how big he’s gotten, having not seen him in well over a year. 

“When Bucky said you were big, I wasn’t sure I believed him. I always said you were a late bloomer,” she gushes, taking the pyrex dish out of his hands and setting it on the counter. “Grant was around six-foot-four, wasn’t he, Sarah?”

“Six-two. He would’ve been about Steve’s size now,” she says. “My side of the family is the late bloomers. He always did look like his father, Grant’s mother always said.” She’s smiling, but it’s a wistful thing, not quite happy. It’s the look she always gets on her face whenever Steve’s father comes up in conversation.

“Steve, can you put the place markers out?” Winifred asks, handing Steve a sheet of paper with a diagram of where everyone is supposed to sit around it. “They’re already made, they’re in the basket on the table.”

Steve finds the basket in the dining room and walks around the table, trying to decipher Winifred’s handwriting and placing people properly. He never understands why this is such a thing with Winifred and Sarah. At Christmas, they have place cards, too. Steve guesses it might be to keep bickering siblings (i.e. Becca and Bucky) separated so the good-natured prodding doesn’t turn ugly over the course of the meal. 

Steve sets George at the head like always. Grant gets a name card, always has even though as of this year Steve’s officially lived more years without him than with him, and he always gets the other head of the table. 

Steve sets those first, because they’re easy to remember. Winifred always sits two seats down from George on the right and Sarah sits on the left of Grant’s chair. It’s the children and various extended relatives that sometimes appear for the holiday that flip-flop across the table, but this year must be a quiet affair, because the only other names on the chart are Steve, Bucky, Janie, Rachel, and Becca. Becca is sandwiched between Winifred and Sarah and Janie and Rachel are sitting on either side of George. 

Bucky and Steve are sitting next to each other.

Winifred and Sarah purposefully never sat Steve and Bucky next to one another. They got into enough trouble just looking at each other across the table. They weren’t about to go putting them next to one another. But there they are. Steve, between Bucky and Rachel. 

When they sit down, Bucky raises an eyebrow but takes the seat all the same. Winifred had the sense to seat Steve on Bucky’s right so the prayer isn’t more awkward than it needs to be, with a lesbian and two bi guys at the table. 

“Dear lord, we thank you for the food we are about to eat and for the hands that helped to prepare it. We thank you for the past year, for the experiences some of us had and the healing others of us did. We ask you to bless our food, to bless us, and to bless those who could not be here today. We ask this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

Steve doesn’t hear Bucky mutter an “Amen,” but he does feel the grip on his fingers through the whole thing, getting even tighter than it was when George references his healing. Steve squeezes his fingers as he says his amen before letting go. 

Throughout the meal, though, Bucky manages to find a way to touch Steve: tapping his shoulder to get his attention, hand accidentally brushing his forearm to reach for the salt, foot fidgeting across the carpet to nudge Steve’s. It would be unsettling, all this contact, if Steve bothered to consider how Bucky refused to let anyone except Peggy touch him on campus, but Steve isn’t thinking about that. He’s too busy trying to figure out why he’s so warm whenever Bucky accidentally brushes against him.


	6. Chapter 6

For the three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Steve fields two major episodes with his residents. The first, he has Teddy and Billy sitting on opposite ends of his room, ending with them leaving arm over shoulder with each other. Steve’s still not sure how he managed that. The second involved a group of overtired freshmen in the lounge on the hall while he was on duty one night, practically in tears over their final assignments. 

Their first semester is clearly going well.

Steve stays up all night a week before finals, finishing the final proposal for his senior art show. He’s settled on metamorphosis as his theme, specifically how perception takes longer to catch up to reality. Given his recent “beefcake” status, as Natasha has been calling it, he thinks he’s adequately educated on that particular aspect of the human psyche. He’s still skinny and small and wheezy in his dreams, after all. 

He somehow pulls it off and when he leaves his studio the sun is rising over the campus and there’s snow from the night before that Steve had been too distracted by his work to notice falling outside his window. It’s not much -- it barely covers the grass -- but it’s so glittery in the morning sun that Steve doesn’t feel nearly as dead as he could feel. It keeps him at least alert until he makes it to the dining hall and promptly slumps over the table Nat and Clint have claimed.

“Are you dead?” Clint asks. Steve knocks his fist against the air  _ yes _ . “Okay. You want coffee?”  _ Yes. _

“Here.” Nat taps the back of his head and when he turns, a thermos is sitting in front of his face. He tilts his head up to look at her. “It’s human jet fuel and it tastes better than the mass-brewed shit in the servery. You’re welcome.”

“Have I ever told you how much I love you?” Steve asks, sitting up and reaching for the thermos.

“It’s been mentioned once or twice,” she says easily. “Bucky’s on his way with Angie and Peggy. She’s got the closing schedule.”

“Am I doing Kirby?”

“Probably. I have the Simon suites and half of the apartments. She’ll show us the full list when she gets here.” She eyes him for a moment. “You haven’t eaten in almost fourteen hours. Go get food, now.”

“How’d you do that?”

“I know everything,” she says. “Go.”

When he gets back, Bucky and Peggy and Angie are sitting with Nat and Clint, too. Bucky’s taken the chair on the other side of Steve’s seat. He’s got his elbow propped up on the table and he’s got what looks like a pretty tight grip on his hair. Steve sets his plate down and sits, and Bucky shifts, tension leaving his back.

“How many exams do you have?”

“Just two. A few papers, though,” he says. His hand is still tight in his hair, which looks like it was brushed recently, maybe. It’s falling into his face, though, so Steve picks up a hand and slowly, telegraphing his movements so Bucky can see it coming, brushes it out of his face. Bucky’s head tilts up as Steve does, almost like he’s leaning into the touch. Steve lets his hand fall to Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky sits up, his arm falling into his lap.

“Are you guys okay?” Clint asks, distantly from the other side of the table. Steve looks over. “Should we, like, leave?”

“Leave them alone,” Peggy says. Steve drops his hand and sits towards the table. Bucky mirrors him. 

“It was a lot of staring,” Clint says. Natasha smacks him upside the head. “Ow! What’d I do?”

***

Somehow finals don’t kill them. Steve flies through his American History exam, thanks to Angie’s willingness to help him out with studying for it. He wasn’t too concerned, but Steve felt like maybe, as his last core curriculum requirement, he should at least pass it. He turns in the final proposals and thumbnails a day early, so he’s free by Thursday to pack up and remind his residents of closing procedure. He fields a couple emergencies -- two residents forget to unplug their mini-fridges and someone calls from JFK, having forgotten his driver’s license and wallet, could Steve bring it to him? (The answer was an emphatic  _ no _ .)

Aside from that, the last few days of the semester are quiet. Bucky has started hanging out in Steve’s room while Steve is on duty again, which makes the late nights a little more bearable. They’re slowly making it through the list of movies that has remained untouched since before Steve left for Europe, and Steve thinks that while it’s a stress relief during a normal week, when Bucky turns up at his door three hours before rounds start, after his last exam and looking even worse for wear than Steve’s gotten used to seeing as “default raggedness,” Steve thinks that maybe Bucky needs them more than he’s letting on.

Human interaction is hard for Bucky. From what he’s gathered, last spring has him messed up about more than just running into burning buildings. Part of it, Steve privately thinks, is the fact that his missing arm is so fucking noticeable. People see that it’s gone and ask what happened, or they stare at it enough that Bucky feels like he has to acknowledge it. 

Bucky falls asleep in Steve’s room on Friday night and rather than wake him, Steve just lets him sleep. It’s not weird, exactly. They grew up having sleepovers, have shared beds before, Steve tells himself as he goes to bed himself. Besides, Steve pushed the two beds in the room together at the beginning of the year. It’s practically a king bed, which is plenty big enough for two six-foot-plus college guys. Steve sets his alarm for seven so he can be at the staff meeting for ten on time, with time to go for a run and get breakfast.

He wakes up about ten minutes before his alarm and any other morning he’d be pissed about that, but Steve wakes up plastered against Bucky, head resting on his broad chest with a hand pressed into the curve between his neck and his shoulder. Bucky’s arm is curled up behind Steve, a hand in Steve’s hair. Steve feels Bucky’s toes twitch against his ankle. 

It’s not the worst way to wake up, Steve thinks, shifting and turning his face in towards Bucky’s chest a little bit. Bucky smells like Peggy’s detergent, but with Old Spice deodorant. Bucky used Bearglove all through high school. Once, Sarah accidentally bought Bearglove for Steve and Steve spent a week looking around, expecting Bucky for no reason at all, before he figured out why. 

Bucky smells like Peggy’s detergent and Bucky’s deodorant and that Bucky smell that reminds Steve of dirt fields and baseball and feverish afternoons and overdue math homework. 

Steve doesn’t want to move. Bucky is comfortable to lie on, so Steve hitches his arm a little higher on his chest, holding himself closer to Bucky. He lies there, just breathing, enjoying the shared body heat. He doesn’t move immediately when his alarm goes off and Bucky groans underneath him.

“Stevie, turn it off,” he grunts, and then goes rigid when he realizes how they’re positioned, and Steve realizes that snuggling your best friend who isn’t super into human contact without his consent is probably a bad idea. 

He sits up and grabs his phone off the chest of drawers he has next to his bed functioning as his nightstand, and turns off the alarm. He gets up, moving around to get dressed for his run. Bucky doesn’t move from Steve’s bed.

“I’ll be back in half an hour,” Steve says, mostly to the floor than to Bucky. He doesn’t bother waiting for Bucky to respond before heading out. He’s all the way down and out of the dorm when he realizes he forgot his headphones.

When he was in Europe, he ran a lot. He found that it was the best way to learn the city he was in. It also helped, in the spring, to distract from all the noise in his head, constantly trying to figure out why Bucky wasn’t speaking to him. He runs a lot less now that he’s home, but today he maybe pushes himself a little too hard and he can already feel the hurt coming on as he makes his way back up to his room. 

He finds Bucky wearing a shirt that definitely belongs to Steve (Bucky never buys anything blue for himself), sitting on the floor, trying to gather his hair into a ponytail.

“Do you need help?” Steve asks. Bucky looks up at him.

“You know how to do this?”

“Can’t be that hard,” Steve says. Bucky side-eyes him but pushes one hand in a closed-5 shape towards Steve, palm towards himself:  _ go ahead. _

Steve perches on his bed behind Bucky and carefully gathers Bucky’s hair into his hand. Bucky holds up a hair tie, and Steve takes it, and carefully starts wrapping it around Bucky’s hair.

“Don’t pull it through all the way through on the last loop,” Bucky tells him. Steve doesn’t, and the hair stays on the back of Bucky’s head in the messy bun that Bucky wears most days. Bucky gropes at it after Steve lets go of his head. “Not bad,” he says, turning to grin at Steve. “Go take a shower, you smell like shit.” 

***

Steve goes through every room in Kirby and Lee and Goodman. He checks that everything is unplugged, that there aren’t any candles or alcohol in any immediately visible areas in the rooms, and that they are actually gone for the break. They find a couple late-stayers, but they have their paperwork in and Phil and Maria know that they’re there.

Sam is his partner, and really, ResLife should know better. They have a great time, though, snapchatting all the bizarre shit they find in the rooms. One of the rooms has traffic signs on the walls. 

“Riley’s staying in Virginia with me for break,” Sam tells him when the conversation turns to break plans. “My mama just about threatened me with a never-ending stream of extended family if I didn’t bring him down. So, I’m bringing him, and then she tells me I’m not getting out of the family stuff either way, and they all wanna meet him!” Steve can’t help the laughter that bubbles out as he knocks on another door before keying in.

“Aw, shut up,” Sam says goodnaturedly. “So, what about you? It’s just you and your ma, right?” Steve nods.

“We do dinner in, by ourselves. Buck’s got extended family up in Westchester and they always go up to visit them for Christmas. His parents always have a party for New Year’s, but I don’t know if they will this year.”

“Maybe you guys can hang instead,” Sam says.

“Yeah, that’d be good. He stayed over last night.” Sam’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. “Not like that! Sam! He’s -- Bucky isn’t --!” 

“Wow, chill out,” Sam says, huffing a laugh. “Take a breath. Don’t want you to go wheezing all over these kids’ rooms.”

He takes a quick look around and drops a slip of paper telling the residents that they passed on the desk. Steve follows him out of the room and locks the door behind them.

“I’m just surprised. Why’d he stay over?”

“He fell asleep and then I fell asleep,” Steve says. It’s mostly the truth, anyway. 

“He told you anything yet?” Sam asks, checking off the room on the list. He sounds like he’s trying too hard to be casual.

“Like what?” Steve asks, and he’s met with Sam shrugging almost immediately.

“Anything, man, you know. Y’all were close, and then last winter happened and y’all stopped talking.”

“No, he hasn’t,” Steve says. “But we’re gonna spend a lot of the break together, so I’m sure we’ll do a lot of talking.” He casts a glance over at Sam, but lately Sam has been working on his therapist face, that carefully neutral but still clearly caring about you face. It’s incredibly annoying.

***

Christmas with the Rogers is quiet. Steve and Sarah open presents with the twenty-four-hour  _ Christmas Story  _ channel blaring in the background. Sarah’s parents died before Steve was born, and Grant’s were both gone before he died. It’s just the two of them, but Steve’s never felt like he was missing out, just having his mom. It makes holidays simpler, less stressful if they don’t have to impress any extended family with their two-person unit. 

They’re settled on the couch, dinner spread out over the coffee table, when Sarah gently prods him about his senior art show. He starts explaining about the idea of metamorphosis, how his perceptions of the world haven’t changed even though the world’s perception of him has.

“I’m still not sure how it’ll translate,” he admits. Sarah watches him over her mug of hot chocolate (infused with Bailey’s because Sarah’s parents were fresh off the boat from Ireland and some traditions are still sacred), waiting for him to continue. “How do you explain inverting perceptions?”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” she says. “What’d Bucky think of it?”

“He’s out of practice critiquing me,” Steve says. Sarah laughs. “I think he likes it. I was thinking, about maybe asking him to pose for some of the pieces. He went through a bunch of changes, too, but I don’t wanna make him uncomfortable.”

“I don’t think it’d make him uncomfortable, exactly,” Sarah says. “I think, if you phrase it the right way, he’d do it.”

“Ma, he’s  _ so _ uncomfortable around people, still.” 

“Well, that’s bound not to go away for a while,” Sarah says. “Steve, he went through something extraordinarily traumatic for someone his age and has a very physical reminder of that trauma. Not to mention that he almost definitely still blames himself for what happened.”

“He shouldn’t,” Steve says. Sarah nods.

“I know that and you know that but sometimes, it just happens that way.” She gives him a sharp look. “You should ask him to help with your show. He’d give you anything. He always has.”

***

The Barnes are having their New Year’s Eve party, but Bucky doesn’t want to go. Sarah tells Steve that she is planning on going and will stay the night at the Barnes’ brownstone but Steve and Bucky are welcome to stay in the apartment for the evening. Sarah hasn’t had to give them the No Parties No Girls lecture since they were in high school, and even then they never did things like that. They didn’t exactly have the popularity to get away with it, either, but that was never really addressed back then.

Bucky shows up around five with his backpack slung over his shoulder. Steve is working on making buffalo chicken macaroni and cheese for the two of them and hears the door open. Sarah is still getting dressed before heading over to help Winifred set up.

“Hi,” Bucky says, coming into the kitchen and setting his backpack down on the chair. “I got beer.”

“Oh, cool, thanks,” Steve says. “You want me to pay for half, or --”

“It’s on me,” Bucky says. Steve nods, turning back to the boiling pot. “Buffalo mac?”

“Yeah, can you get the chicken out of the fridge? It’s in the plastic bag on the middle shelf.” Bucky scoots around Steve and goes to the fridge. Sarah comes out of her room, adjusting an earring.

“Steve, can you zip me?” she asks. “Hi, Bucky!” Steve turns from the stove to zip her dress up and Sarah goes in for a hug from Bucky. “How are things at your house?”

“My dad was still alive when I left,” Bucky reports, grinning. 

“Oh, excellent. I promised Fred I’d be there by five-thirty, I’d better get going. You two have fun and behave!”

“Yes, Ma,” Steve says at the same time that Bucky says, “Yes, ma’am,” earning a laugh from Sarah as she heads out the door.

Steve drains the pasta and mixes the buffalo chicken into the blue cheese and cheddar sauce that was quietly simmering on the back burner, before mixing the fresh elbow pasta into the sauce. He tops it off with some more shredded cheese before popping the whole thing into the oven to let it bake and the top to get crispy.

Bucky is sitting at the kitchen table, a beer open by his elbow, and he’s staring at Steve.

“What?” Steve says. Bucky jerks back to reality. “Is there something on my face?”

“No,” Bucky says too quickly. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. We’ve got, like, twenty minutes.” Bucky nods. Steve goes to the fridge and grabs a beer out of the six-pack. “What do you wanna watch tonight? All the New Year’s Eve stuff doesn’t start until later, and I kinda can’t stand Carson Daly.”

“Who can?” Bucky asks and Steve grins. “Let’s burn through a couple of the movies on our list, yeah?”

“Yeah, okay,” Steve says. “Got a preference?” Bucky shrugs. 

They end up on the couch with a mockumentary about vampires playing on the TV. The pot with the macaroni and cheese is set on two potholders on the table, and they try their best but strings of melted cheese end up cooling on the glass topper of the coffee table anyway. 

It’s comfortable. There are more and more moments when Bucky doesn’t seem afraid of physical contact (or, sometimes, of Steve) that are coming quicker and for longer periods of time, like maybe Bucky is moving on. Steve forgot how nice it felt just to sit with him and not need to say anything. He missed that, while in Europe, and then last summer, and then at the beginning of the semester, but the kind of missing where he wasn’t sure what he was missing, exactly. 

This. He was missing this. And he has it again, but it doesn’t quite feel like enough.

The movie ends and Bucky seems ambivalent about starting another, so they channel surf for a bit, before settling on some rerun of a sitcom that neither of them really watch religiously but are happy to have going. Steve works on clearing away empty bottles and bowls. When he comes back from putting the bottles in recycling and their dishes and silverware from dinner in the dishwasher, Bucky is stretched out, eyes closed, on the couch.

“You falling asleep on me?” Steve asks.

“Nah, you wish,” Bucky says. “Gonna snuggle up to me again when I do?” Steve feels his ears go red. Bucky cracks an eye open. “Oh, relax.”

Steve sits down next to him. “I don’t think I apologized properly for that.”

“Don’t worry about it, Stevie,” Bucky says, reaching out and ruffling his hair affectionately. Steve can’t help but lean into the touch a little bit. Bucky leaves his hand in Steve’s hair for a second, studying his face, before he lets his hand fall to the back of Steve’s neck. His arm wraps around Steve’s shoulders and Steve is pulled towards Bucky, his head practically on Bucky’s chest again.

Despite Steve’s arm being pinned between his back and Bucky’s side, it’s not the worst position to sit on this couch in. They stay like that for a while, before Steve hears Bucky clear his throat. Steve tries to shift but he can’t really get a good look at Bucky’s face.

“I wanna tell you. About what happened.”

“You have, already?” Steve says. Bucky huffs a laugh above him. Steve hears it reverberate around in Bucky’s chest.

“I know. But you don’t  _ know _ .” Steve waits. “Dugan and I were gonna go in together. There were four people, their exits were blocked by fallen support beams and shit. Pierce sent us in, said once we had the civilians they’d start the hoses and try to salvage the building. It was pre-war, historic, y’know?” Steve doesn’t respond. “So we go in. Dugan has to double back because something was wrong with his oxygen. Pierce is on the comms saying that they’ve got a tank waiting for him, so I don’t need to come back out if I’m doing okay. I start going in, trying to find those people.”

“Without Dugan?”

“Got the chief’s orders, can’t disobey those. Right before I go into the room they’re in, the comms cut out. I don’t realize it until I try to tell everyone outside that I found them. It’s three adults and a kid, like nine or ten, maybe? There’s no way out, immediately, so I try to contact someone outside for assistance but I’m not getting through and no one’s coming. The doorway I came into looks like the wall might be stable, so I start getting the adults that are still conscious up and I get the third one over my shoulder and the kid, and we start going, but then it collapses. So we’re stuck.” He stops, takes a deep breath. Bucky’s arm is holding Steve to his chest, so Steve can’t look at him. 

“Buck, you don’t --”

“Shut up, I do,” Bucky cuts him off. “The other two that were still conscious started getting woozy, coughing a bunch, so I had them get low. I tried to find a place that I could break down the wall safely and maybe get them out. I thought I’d found it but then, this support beam crashed down from the ceiling. It pinned me across the forearm and my shin, here.” He releases Steve for a second to point to a spot on his leg. Steve takes the chance to sit up and watch Bucky’s face. “Broken tibia and fibula, right below the patella. Could’ve been worse, considering. But I couldn’t move. Comms still weren’t working, so I told the guy that was still awake to try screaming for help because I couldn’t reach anyone outside. We both did. And then he kinda --” He cuts himself off, breathing slowly, like meditating.

“What they don’t tell you about dying in a house fire is that you probably won’t die from getting burned alive. You die from inhaling the smoke. You get burns on your lungs and in your windpipe and stuff, but that’s not what kills you. It’s the lack of oxygen, so you end up passing out before you die,” he says. He takes Steve’s hand. Steve is fairly sure that he doesn’t realize he’s done this, but Steve holds it all the same. “So I was alone. All of them were out. The building was burning around us. I could see the flames getting closer and closer to them. I wasn’t sure -- I thought maybe they were still alive, but then when -- they caught fire, too, and they didn’t, respond, because it’s the most painful thing you can go through, like, the most. That was when I knew. I didn’t save them.”

“God, Buck.” Bucky’s face looks far away, like he’s telling the story from somewhere so far removed from the story that it can’t hurt him even though Steve knows the truth. 

“I woke up in the hospital, to two detectives. They were looking into the fire. No one should’ve died.” He looks at Steve. “The second I woke up, I asked about them, and then where you were.” 

“Me?”

“Your ma was on shift, so they managed to get her down. She reminded me. That you were in Europe and wouldn’t be back.” He looks at Steve. “I wanted you with me more than anyone in the world and all I had was a coupla detectives asking me about the firehouse. And then I found out about Pierce and everything that had been happening. They let me give my testimony for the trial and they promised I wouldn’t be contacted about it again, so I could recover.

“It took six weeks for the leg to heal. I had to have two more surgeries after the initial amputation. One was to correct nerve damage in my shoulder and the other was to reshape the stump so I could get a prosthetic.”

“You don’t have one,” Steve points out. 

“Tony’s dad is working on it. He’s gonna break into the medical cybernetics industry.” He smiles, but it’s an unhappy thing. “I had to miss a lot of school. I worked with the college to get my credits sorted so I could graduate on time, but you know all that. My parents and I thought that maybe, I should get out of the city for the summer, that it’d help. I wasn’t good in crowds.” Steve raises an eyebrow. “Worse, in crowds.” Bucky presses his lips together in a regretful smile. “I wish I could’ve told you sooner. I wanted -- I almost died. After I got pinned and I was alone, all I could think was how the last thing I ever sent to you was some dumb internet meme.” 

“It would’ve been true to you,” Steve says and Bucky rolls his eyes, but his face is softening.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you what happened. I wanted to, but I let those people die, Stevie, and you’re -- god, Steve, not for nothing, but you make the rest of us look like assholes.”

“I do not.”

“I’m not arguing with you about this. You do. But what was I gonna say? How would you still stand to be around me, after I told you what happened? You’re the best thing I have in my life, you know? You always have been.”

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Steve starts, slowly. “There is absolutely nothing you could do that would make me want to keep you out of my life. Okay? Nothing. I’m with you forever.” Bucky nods. He looks a little red around the eyes but neither of them address it. He leans back on Bucky’s shoulder, but lets their hands stay joined in his lap. 

They stay snuggled up like this for the duration of two more episodes of the sitcom before switching to the New Year’s Eve specials. Steve gets up and gets the small bottle of champagne he bought earlier in the day from the fridge, along with two coffee mugs, because Sarah Rogers doesn’t have time for proper glassware for a drink she hates. 

“Classy,” Bucky says. 

“Shuddup,” Steve says. They sit curled around each other with their mugs of champagne in Steve’s hands, as Steve nestles his face into Bucky’s neck and Bucky wraps his arm over Steve’s shoulders again. 

“Hey, remember New Year’s Eve when we were thirteen?” Bucky says, watching as Fergie talks mostly with her head movements. Steve’s brow creases, before he remembers.

They’d both confessed to each other that they maybe liked boys as well as girls. They figured, that if the other also did, then it couldn’t be something wrong with them. It was a big deal, since everyone in the eighth grade was talking about who they wanted their first kiss to be and a couple kids were already getting picked on for being “queer.”

And they decided that they should just get this whole first kiss business over with and kissed each other at New Year’s at midnight. Because that was what you were supposed to do and that solved their problem pretty quickly. 

“What about it?” Steve asks. Bucky shrugs underneath him. 

“Just remembered it,” Bucky says. He sounds too casual.

They end up sitting up properly and counting down with the TV. Distantly, they can hear the fireworks over the river welcoming the new year. Steve turns to hug Bucky, and Bucky just about melts into it, resting his head against Steve’s shoulder. For the first time, Steve can feel their size difference and doesn’t even care that it feels like it should be reversed.


	7. Chapter 7

The new semester brings on all sorts of new changes. A new resident moves into the hall and Steve works on subtly rolling out the welcome wagon. He hosts a hall game night in the lounge and manages to avoid any major arguments and it looks like maybe Tommy Shepherd will do just fine in his hall. Billy and Teddy still have that weird maybe-sexual tension thing going on but they haven’t come to Steve about it so Steve will stay out of it until he needs to.

He has more free time now that he’s finally done with core curriculum requirements and he spends as much of that as he can in his studio working on pencil drawings to draft the final pieces. He still hasn’t worked up the nerve to ask Bucky to model for him but he’s got enough experience with drawing bucky that the drafts aren’t too hard to do from memory. Steve draws enough that by the time he thinks he’s ready to start on the final pieces, he could potentially pick enough drawings for the show that he wouldn’t need Bucky’s.

But he kind of wants Bucky’s.

Bucky is also different this semester. Namely, that he can’t stop touching Steve.

It starts at Tony’s apartment, when they’re just hanging out. Tony said they could bring their own booze if they wanted but they didn’t have to, and he spent most of the evening experimenting with a juicer he designed over the break, with Rhodey supervising so that he doesn’t accidentally juice a finger or something. 

But Steve and Bucky and Nat and Clint and Pepper are hanging out in the living room, drinking the beer Clint brought and they’re laughing at the half-argument Tony and Rhodey are having in the kitchen. Bucky is basically pressed up against Steve’s side. They’re sitting hip to hip which is a lot easier to do because Steve is on Bucky’s left, where there isn’t an arm to worry about getting in the way. It’s kind of a shitty thought, Steve thinks to himself later, after they’ve left and Steve is in his room alone, but Steve found that they sort of just… fit. The curve of Bucky’s legs were well-matched for Steve’s, and when Steve had his arm up over the back of the couch and Bucky sort of just tucked himself into Steve’s side, he fit there, too.

Not to mention the fact that it felt  _ really nic _ e having Bucky that close.

***

“Will you go with me into Manhattan this weekend?” Bucky asks a few weeks into the semester. He’s hanging out with Steve in Steve’s studio, sitting on the working table as Steve lays down outlines on a canvas, a million references clipped to the sides of his easel.

“Sure.”

“You don’t know why I want to go.”

“I got nothing going on,” Steve replies easily, glancing at him over the easel. “Why are we going into Manhattan?” Bucky’s cheeks look flushed but that might just be how ungodly hot it is in this studio, but Steve can’t crack a window because he will for sure forget and come back and find his paints are completely frozen.

“Tony says there’s a prototype for the arm that’s ready for me to try at the Stark building. They wanna see it on me to see if having it on a human can help work out some of the kinks,” Bucky says. “I can’t leave with it, but they hope I can have it before the end of the summer.” 

That makes sense. He’s leaving at the end of the summer. Indianapolis. Steve swallows the thought.

“Of course,” Steve says. Bucky smiles. 

***

They meet at the train station. Bucky is all bundled up in his winter coat with the sleeve stuffed and pinned into the pocket. He reaches out and holds onto Steve’s arm as they move through the train station. When they make it to the train, he doesn’t let go. Steve looks over at him and he’s staring out into space in front of them. 

“Y’okay?”

“Nervous,” Bucky admits. Steve slips his hand out of his pocket and lets Bucky wind his arm around his, pulling himself closer to Steve. 

They sit with their arms linked for the duration of the trip into the city. When they get off at Grand Central, Bucky grabs at Steve’s hand, and even though they’re both wearing gloves Steve can feel the heat of Bucky’s palm radiating into his own. Bucky’s got a tight grip on his fingers, but Steve doesn’t mind. It’s a stressful day for him.

It’s barely two blocks from Grand Central’s exit to Stark Tower. They get buzzed in by the receptionist and when Bucky doesn’t let go of Steve’s hand, Steve walks up to the desk with him.

“I’m James Barnes, I have a meeting with Howard Stark,” Bucky says, gripping Steve’s hand impossibly tighter. 

“And you?” the receptionist asks Steve.

“He’s with me,” Bucky says. She raises an eyebrow but doesn’t comment. 

“You can head up to the thirtieth floor. Mr. Stark will be with you shortly,” she says, gesturing to the elevator across the lobby. Bucky thanks her and pulls Steve with him.

Once they’re in the elevator, Steve takes his hand back to take off his gloves and unbutton his coat. Howard Stark likes his buildings toasty warm, apparently. Bucky doesn’t seem to have noticed. But once Steve’s coat is unbuttoned and his gloves are stashed in his pockets, Bucky reaches for Steve’s hand again. Steve lets him take it.

They reach the thirtieth floor and the elevator open to reveal a workshop space, completely open to the whole floor without any office spaces or conference rooms. They step out and a little robot that comes up to about Steve’s hip starts poking and prodding and trying to pull at Steve’s coat.

“Buck, what --”

“Dum-E! We do  _ not _ shred the guests’ clothing!” Tony appears from behind what appears to be a half-deconstructed car engine. “Oh, hey, Barnes-Rogers. Or would it be Rogers-Barnes?”

“What?”

“Give the nice stupid robot your coats,” Tony says, waving a wrench at them. “You’ll probably get them back before you leave.”

“What do you mean  _ probably _ , it’s like twenty degrees out.”

“Relax. The old man’ll be down soon. He’s got an R and D meeting going on upstairs,” Tony rolls his eyes. “Pep’s texting me with updates.”

“You guys here every weekend?”

“What, you think we just hole up in my cozy off-campus pad and dance the horizontal hula?” 

“I don’t -- what does that even -- forget it,” Steve says, handing his coat to the robot (Dum-E, apparently) and taking Bucky’s coat from him, and handing it to Dum-E as well.

“And to answer your question, I’m here during weekends during the day. Dear Old Dad is letting me use this workshop for research. Pepper is, shall we say, on call for him when she’s not ruling reslife,” Tony says. 

The elevator dings behind them. Pepper comes striding out, wearing a white dress suit and heels that click against the floor. Behind her is Howard Stark.

“James!” Stark says. “Good to see you.”

“You, too,” Bucky says, shaking his hand. “This is Steve Rogers.”

“Ah, yes, abroad all last year. James mentioned you,” Stark says. Behind him, Tony is rolling his eyes again. “Okay, well! Let’s get started.”

***

Stark has a number of medical officials working with him on the prosthetics program, and what seems to be a full medical suite that was hidden behind a set of doors on the other end of the workshop that Steve didn’t notice when they arrived. 

Bucky is taken into the suite and prepped for the arm while Steve waits outside in the workshop. Pepper and Tony bicker amiably, like they always do. It’s nearly thirty minutes before Steve is called in.

Bucky has changed into what look like scrub pants, and a tank top. Some scars that look pink and raised cross over what’s left of his arm and shoulder, and dip below the shirt, hidden from view, and Steve suspects there’s more to them underneath. Bucky is looking anywhere except for at Steve.

“Steve, why don’t you go stand on Bucky’s right, mind the wires,” one of the doctors says. “Okay, what we’re gonna do is, we attach the arm to the stump here, and then we work through the receptors and hopefully give you some sensation in the arm.” 

“We’d also like to do some tests on the strength of the arm,” someone chimes in from behind a laptop. Steve looks over. A metal arm made up of interconnecting plates and joints is lying on the table, wires hooking it up to the laptop the doctor (or engineer, at this point Steve doesn’t know) is working on. “We think it’s calibrated properly, but we’d like to make sure.”

“Calibrated to what?” Steve asks.

“Strength tests based on Bucky’s right arm, and based on statistics of twenty-one-year-old men of his height, weight, and muscle mass percentage.”

Stark is hovering over the engineer at the laptop. “The technology is very new. If it works properly, James should be able to feel what he touches and what touches the arm.”

“You can do that?” Steve says. Stark shrugs.

“If it works, we’ll see.” 

“Are you ready, Bucky?” one of the doctors ask. Bucky looks at Steve, then back at the doctor, and nods. 

They start moving. The arm is unplugged and carried over by hands wearing latex gloves. Bucky’s stump is swabbed with iodine. Bucky’s hand twitches on the medical table between himself and Steve. 

Steve rests his hand palm-up on the table next to Bucky’s. As the doctors start fussing around the stump and the prosthetic, Bucky looks down at Steve’s hand and then up at his face. Steve raises his eyebrows and signs with his other hand  _ you O.K.? _

Bucky just rolls his eyes.  _ Fine _ , tapping his hand, fingers spread, against his chest. One of the doctors asks him to face forward, so he does. His hand falls right into Steve’s. Steve squeezes his fingers gently. 

It takes a while, but the arm is eventually attached properly. The doctors walk Bucky through how to attach the arm properly and how too tight or too loose attachments can affect the usability of the arm. He can get about a week of use between charging, unless he’s using it for something more strenuous, like heavy lifting.

“We’re going to turn on the sensors before we start the strength tests,” Stark says. “We have to take them two at a time, so you can adjust to them.” Bucky nods. Steve looks over at him.

“How much can you feel?” Steve asks quietly as the engineers start prepping the program and attach wires to the arm in ports that open from different plates in the upper part of the arm.

“It’s not heavy,” Bucky says. “Like, probably about the same weight as my arm. Feels like I’m balanced.” He looks over at him. “I can’t tell if it’s cold or warm or smooth or anything, if that’s what you’re asking. Nerve damage all the way up to the clavicle.”

Steve just sort of nods. 

“Are you ready?” the engineer asks. Bucky clenches his jaw and nods, and Steve is about to ask why Bucky looks even more tense than before, but then his head drops to his chest as he inhales sharply, and he grips Steve’s hand even tighter. 

“That’s the first two,” Stark says. Bucky nods against his chest. Steve turns so he’s facing Bucky. 

“Gimme a sec,” Bucky says, whether to Stark or to Steve, it isn’t clear. He breathes through his teeth, a ragged sound that hurts Steve to hear. He puts his other hand on the back of Bucky’s and holds his hand between his own, tight, hoping it’s reassuring. “Stevie, can you talk to me?” 

“About what?”

“Literally whatever you want,” Bucky says through gritted teeth. “Just, please?”

“So, I think two of my residents are dating,” Steve says, because it’s the first thing he could think of. “Yeah, those two kids, you’ve probably seen them, Billy and Teddy. They’re roommates. Some weeks, it seems like they’re at each other’s throats, and then the next they’re all standing up in each other’s personal space…” 

Steve goes on and on about the gossip on his hall. On the next two sensors, Steve changes to painting techniques. He jumps to his post-graduation plans, how he’s hoping for a job at that gallery in Clinton Hill, but he’s also considering maybe looking for a museum job. From there he goes to the late-night ponderings he’s taken to falling asleep thinking about, how he wonders where their friends will end up, who will stay together, who will break up, who will leave the city and move to the suburbs, or even go further. 

Steve’s still babbling when Stark clears his throat loudly to shut him up.

“All the sensors are on. Aside from the expected pain, are you experiencing any discomfort?” he asks Bucky. Bucky rolls his shoulder stiffly. The plates on the arm shift. He shakes his head. Stark grins. “Excellent! Let’s get started on the strength tests.”

Strength tests, it turns out, are just having Bucky pick things up and set them back down. But he keeps his grip on Steve’s hand and pulls him with him to the table. Steve stands with him as he lifts a pen, an apple, a book, and a full 32-ounce water bottle. When he sets the water bottle back down, there are small cracks starting to form in the sides. 

“We’ll have to recalibrate that,” Stark says. “Any discomfort?”

“No,” Bucky says.

“How much of that can you feel?” a doctor asks. 

“Weight of it. The water was cold, right?” Bucky says. The doctors and engineers all make excited sounds as they write down their notes and Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand. Bucky squeezes back. 

***

They go back to campus pretty much in silence. After putting their outer gear back on, Bucky doesn’t look to take Steve’s hand again. Steve waits until they’re back on the train and then he tentatively touches Bucky’s arm. Bucky holds out his elbow, his hand still stuck firmly in his pocket, but it’s a clear invitation. Steve links his arm through Bucky’s and they sit, riding the LIRR, touching but not in the way Steve is fairly certain Bucky needs.

Steve carefully asks if Bucky wants to come back to his room and just hang out for a little bit before trying to find their friends for dinner and Bucky agrees almost immediately. Steve figures they’ll watch a couple episodes of 30 Rock or something, or maybe Bucky will fall asleep. Steve figures he probably needs it after the mental gymnastics required for test-driving a brand-new, state-of-the-art cybernetic arm. 

They sit on Steve’s bed and Steve gets an episode up and streaming. Bucky sits next to him but it’s clear he’s not really paying attention. Where Steve laughs, he smiles, absently, like he knows it’s what he’s supposed to be doing but it’s not coming naturally to him. Steve lets the episode play out before he gently closes his laptop and turns to Bucky.

“Do you wanna rest for a little bit? I have some reading I need to catch up on, I don’t mind,” he says, hoping that Bucky won’t try to fight him on sleeping in a place that isn’t his own bed, never mind the fact that they’ve fallen asleep on each other’s beds since kindergarten.

But Bucky sighs and says, “Yeah, okay,” and lets himself flop back onto the bed, head meeting a pillow. His dark hair is spilling out all over the pillowcase. Steve’s fingers twitch, longing for the sketchpad on his desk. But he doesn’t get up. Instead, he reaches over to the set of drawers acting as his nightstand. He grabs the book off of it, and lies back next to Bucky and starts reading.

Bucky falls asleep pretty immediately. Steve can tell because he still does that weird sucking-clicking thing with his tongue against the roof of his mouth, even though he’s turning twenty-two in a month and a half. But he’s only asleep for about half an hour before he starts twitching and whimpering. Steve sets the book down. 

“Buck?” Bucky shakes his head in his sleep. “Buck, wake up. You’re fine, just wake up.” He shakes Bucky’s shoulder and Bucky sits up immediately, breathing like he had just been suffocating. He looks wildly around and sees Steve, and for a second his brow furrows and then relaxes. He leans forward, hand holding his forehead and his elbow resting on his knee.

“For a second I forgot you were big,” he says, breathless, into his lap. “You’re still skinny in my dreams, you know?”

“Me, too,” Steve admits. Bucky turns his head and even though he’s pale and still breathing too hard, he smiles. “What were you dreaming about?”

“The fire. You were there,” he says. He sits up, lets his arm fall into his lap. “I’ve had it before. You’re in the building with me, you’re the last one still conscious, and then I’m alone.” 

“Jesus, Buck.” Bucky just shrugs. “Can I hug you?” Bucky looks over at him. His blue eyes seem desperate. Steve leans over and wraps his arms around his shoulders. It takes a second, but Bucky fists his hand into the back of Steve’s sweater. He lets himself be held and even though he’s got a tight grip on Steve, Steve can still feel him shaking in his arms. Bucky takes a deep, shuddering breath and pulls away.

“Sorry,” he says, shaky. He runs the heel of his palm under his eyes. “Today was a lot.”

“I bet,” Steve says, trying to smile. “You handled it really well, though.”

“I just -- I felt normal, aside from the pain and the conscious thinking about moving my arm, I felt like --” he cuts himself off. “I want things. I can’t have them, because of what happened. But I still want them.”

“Like what?”

“Like -- I wanna go to grad school, still,” Bucky says, running a hand through his hair. “Maybe not for science anymore, but I wanna. I wanna be able to go out in public and not worry about how many people are staring at me and why that guy from the school newspaper is practically drooling at me. I want --” He shakes his head. “I don’t get to have those things.”

“It’s not your fault,” Steve says. Bucky raises his eyebrow, a finger to the cleft in his chin, twisting:  _ seriously? _ “Pierce made a bad call and it got you hurt, but you didn’t ask for the building to fall on you. You did everything you could to make sure those people could’ve gotten out alive and maybe if Pierce hadn’t left you in there alone they would’ve made it. But you can’t blame yourself for it. It wasn’t you.”

Bucky looks like he might start crying again. “I wanted you. When I was in there alone and I thought I was gonna die, I wanted, I needed to tell you. I never did and I was gonna die and then I didn’t, and I couldn’t, you didn’t need me. Not like this.”

“I always need you. Don’t think I don’t, you kept me alive through high school, remember?” Bucky chuckles wetly. 

“Yeah, I remember.” He looks up at Steve. “I -- you really are the best thing in my life, you know?” Steve doesn’t have a response to that. He’s not totally sure what’s happening? “I couldn’t imagine that you’d want anything to do with me like this. But I almost died, and all I could think was, I never told you.”

“Told me what?” Bucky frowns.

“Are you really that dumb?” he asks, sniffing. “You idiot, I love you. I’ve loved you since, god, I don’t even know, and I was really fucking unsubtle about it, too, I can’t believe you never -- oh.”

“What?”

“You never thought about it.” He’s shutting down, and shutting down fast. “Sorry. I just -- you kept letting me hold your hand and shit, and I thought -- but that doesn’t matter. No, I just wanted you to know, and now you know, and it’s fine, we don’t have to --”

But he’s cut off by Steve’s lips pressed softly against his own. It’s that warm feeling all over, and Steve realizes that it’s because it’s Bucky and this is coming home, this is walking off that fucking tube that flew him over from Germany last May and grinning ear-to-ear at Sarah with his backpack and newfound broadness. This is the welcome back he never got from Bucky, and his lungs feel tight but not like he’s about to have an asthma attack, more like he can’t breathe in the lightness he feels.

“You fucking moron,” Bucky mumbles against his lips, but he’s smiling. Steve can feel that. He’s smiling, too.


	8. Chapter 8

Natasha notices first.

They sit down together for lunch a few days after their trip to Stark Tower and Bucky tilts his chair in towards Steve’s. Nat raises an eyebrow. Bucky reaches over and steals a fry. This was normal behavior before, but Steve brushing the ketchup off Bucky’s lower lip was not. 

She doesn’t say anything, not then. Instead, she finds Steve in his studio while Bucky is in class later that afternoon.

“You and Bucky,” she says. It’s all she says.

“It was this weekend.”

“He said he was gonna tell you over break and then he didn’t,” Nat tells him. 

“He told me about the accident. The nitty-gritty, you know?” 

“No, actually,” she says, crossing to sit in the chair at the table. “He hasn’t told any of us much. He trusts you.”

“Is this the part where you tell me not to break his heart? Because I’ve known him since we were five.”

“No, I know,” she says. “I trust you not to break his heart. But I just wanted to remind you, again, that he’s still healing. He’s not the Bucky you grew up with. Don’t be surprised if some things don’t… happen, right away.”

“I’m not following.”

“I didn’t expect you to,” she says, getting up and crossing his studio. She stops to kiss him on the cheek, before she heads for the door. “Just be patient.”

***

Once Natasha has confirmation, it seems like everyone else automatically knows. Riley, with whom Steve shares his “for fun” English class, grins knowingly at Steve through the whole class the next day. Tony claps Steve on the shoulder and congratulates him on “ _ finally _ tapping that, we’ve been waiting  _ literally _ forever,” in the servery at lunch. Steve doesn’t bother arguing with him on the terminology. He knows that what Tony’s actually saying is, “I’m so happy for you I could cry but I’ll hide it with false male bravado,” so he just smiles tightly like he’s embarrassed and thanks him. 

The time Bucky spent in Steve’s room doubles. He seems eager to be in the tiny dorm room that’s always too warm, even in the dead of winter like they are now. He lies diagonally across the makeshift king-sized bed, smiles and laughs and pulls Steve on top of him to kiss and be kissed. Steve loves it.

He deletes all his dating apps pretty much immediately. He does this quietly, without fanfare, without the expectation of thanks or praise or something. There hasn’t really been an official conversation about what they are, exactly, but Steve thinks he knows Bucky well enough to know that this wouldn’t be a casual thing. Not after knowing each other for almost two decades and knowing everything about the other, to the point where Steve can predict Bucky’s answers to any question before Bucky says them. 

He deletes them and he doesn’t think anything of them, and instead thinks about all the different ways he’s going to kiss Bucky, because he can do that. He can kiss Bucky.

For some reason, now that he’s allowed to do it, Steve wonders why he didn’t think of it sooner. It’s better than kissing any of the other people he’s ever kissed: better than Peggy, better than Sharon (he was drunk, okay, and it was a party and she was mad at Peggy, too), better than all of his tinder hookups (yes, he’s including the Scandinavian brothers). 

He asks Bucky, if he thinks he knows why Steve hadn’t thought of it sooner, and Bucky rolls his eyes at him. 

“You probably had me labeled from day one as ‘friend only, do not kiss,’” he says, snuggling into Steve’s shoulder. 

He’s probably right.

A thing that Steve forgot that he’s suddenly remembered now that he and Bucky are A Thing is how tactile Bucky is. It started coming back into their relationship after New Year’s Eve, but now it’s like he can’t go without at least some part of their bodies touching. Steve remembers vaguely the semi-serious girlfriends and boyfriends Bucky had, the ones that made it home for a family dinner or two, the ones that actually sat with them during the lunch period at high school, regardless of the fact that no one actually wanted to sit with Steve Rogers, even if Bucky Barnes did it.

But for as tactile as he is, he doesn’t seem particularly interested in pursuing things...further.

Which is fine! Steve will insist to himself, to anyone that asks. No one has, yet, but he would, if they did. Steve doesn’t need sexual-physical intimacy, not at Bucky’s the expense of Bucky’s comfort. But, wouldn’t that be a conversation? Steve knows Bucky’s had sex, knows he’s enjoyed it . Hell, he knows Bucky’s lists of pros and cons of sleeping with different genders. On paper, Steve would be, objectively speaking, the  _ best  _ at sex with Bucky.

But if Bucky doesn’t want it, then Steve won’t force it.

***

Spring break is creeping up on them. Steve has plans to go apartment hunting with Sarah during it.

“Do you think I should ask Bucky if he wants to help?” Steve asks Sam on a duty round late one Tuesday.

“You haven’t talked about what y’all are doing after graduation?” 

“I know he’s going to Indianapolis, there’s not much to talk about.” Steve shrugs. “But, like, I feel like I should include him. So that if he comes back and he wants to, he can have a say in where I’m gonna be.” 

“Riley and I found our place over Christmas,” Sam replies. “We’re signing the contract the first Monday of break.”

“Where are you guys gonna be?”

“Flushing. Riley won that debate. I wanted Hamilton Heights but Flushing’s cheaper and we’re gonna need to save up if he gets the wedding he wants,” Sam says, affectionately rolling his eyes. “He seems to have forgotten a key piece of his plans, but whatever.” Steve laughs.

“If you guys got engaged, the entire campus would know by Thursday morning.” 

“I know. Believe me, I’ve thought this through.”

***

_ Duty Log _

_ Filed by: Steve Rogers _

_ RA Wilson and RA Rogers discussed their plans for future living spaces after graduation. RA Wilson lamented the loss of his fight for Hamilton Heights, and has instead decided to live in Flushing. RA Rogers did not make fun of RA Wilson for deciding to live in Queens even though Brooklyn is clearly the superior borough.  _

_ Freshman dorms quiet. Goodman 3rd floor bathroom is still gross. RA S. Carter, it’s almost March.   _

***

Steve still hasn’t asked Bucky to pose for him. The moment hasn’t felt right. There’s just something about the studio that he doesn’t think would be good for the environment they’d probably need to facilitate that. So he doesn’t ask, continues with his thumbnail sketches and silently hopes for the right time.

He does, however, ask Bucky to come apartment hunting with him and Sarah, to which Bucky lights up like Steve hasn’t seen before. 

They make plans to go that Monday. Steve goes through the motions of ResLife closing up before break (three candles in one room, honestly, these kids are trying to burn down the campus) and then he’s free. Bucky is waiting in his dorm room, sprawled out over the two mattresses pushed together to make a king-sized bed.

They hold hands on the train and then on the subway and all the way to the door of the Barnes’ brownstone. 

“I’ll meet you guys at your place, and then we’ll go,” Bucky says, only it’s more of a question than a plan. Steve nods, kisses him on the stairs up to the front door. 

“Say hi to your parents and the girls for me.”

“Winifred’s gonna want you over for dinner, don’t forget,” Bucky says, leaning against the railing as he climbs the stairs. Steve pauses on the sidewalk.

“Only if you let Sarah feed you this week.” 

“I’ve never passed up a free meal in my entire life, Rogers, and you know it!” Bucky calls over his shoulder as he unlocks his front door. “Don’t sleep in on Monday. You’re buying the coffee.”

***

Sure enough, Bucky arrives at Sarah’s apartment bright and early on Monday morning. Steve manages to beat him waking up and is out when Bucky gets there, but he comes back with coffee and a variety of baked goods to find Bucky snoozing on the couch in the living room. Steve carefully sets everything down on the kitchen counter and takes off his jacket before crossing over to the couch and very carefully settling himself on top of Bucky. 

“Did you think this was sneaky?” Bucky asks, eyes still closed, but his hand has come up to rest on Steve’s hip. 

“Nah, but I thought you’d appreciate it more than just shoving you off the couch.”

“God, you’re not just big, you’re physically dense. How much do you even weigh,” Bucky grumbles, shifting, as if unable to breathe. Steve presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth and Bucky pauses, considering. Steve kisses him again, this time more on the lips, just gentle pressure, without heat or urgency. It’s too early for that, and besides, Steve can hear Sarah bustling about in her room, getting dressed. 

But kissing Bucky on the couch is so nice. His hand has wandered a little up to the base of his back, and Steve thinks he feels a couple of Bucky’s fingers hooked in the belt loops there. Steve’s really glad for the fact that he’s the one on top instead of being pinned to the couch because the way his arms are positioned on either side of Bucky’s head, supporting his weight enough that he doesn’t deadweight on him entirely, means that his hands are in the perfect place to run his fingers through his hair. 

Bucky is doing something really quite fantastic with his teeth against Steve’s bottom lip when Sarah’s door opens and she strides out. Steve can’t pull away fast enough but Sarah is moving past them on the couch straight to the kitchen for the coffee and pastries.

“Honestly, you two,” she says, taking her latte off the carrying tray. “I raised you with more sense than to neck on the couch, Steve.”

“Ma, no one says ‘neck’ in that context anymore,” Steve says, rolling himself off Bucky and almost landing flat on his back on the floor before he catches himself on the coffee table.

“I just did. Come eat before we leave, the realtor won’t be happy if we’re late,” she reminds him. “Both of you.” Bucky sits up and follows Steve into the kitchen. He lingers close as they stand around the kitchen drinking their coffees (Bucky’s, too sweet in Steve’s opinion, and Steve’s with too much cream for Bucky, and Sarah with a hazelnut latte) and picking at the pastries Steve bought (Bucky gets the chocolate muffin, Steve has an egg sandwich on an English muffin, and Sarah has a cheese danish). 

“Did you look at the listings I sent you?” Sarah asks as Steve finishes the dregs of his coffee. He nods into the cup. “What did you think of them?”

“I liked the two-bedroom on President Street,” he says. 

“It was described as ‘sun-drenched’ in the blurb, wasn’t it?” Bucky says around a mouthful of chocolate muffin. Steve hands him a napkin.

“Yeah, and?”

“Nothin’,” Bucky says, taking the napkin but not actually using it. “You would want the ‘sun-drenched’ apartment, that’s all.”

***

The realtor marches them all over Brooklyn. The Crown Heights apartment on President Street is the clear winner, and the realtor promises to have the paperwork drawn up to sign before Steve has to go back to class. 

The three of them go back to Sarah’s apartment and Steve flops face-down on the couch. 

“I feel like a real adult,” he grumbles into the cushions.

“You haven’t even signed anything yet,” Sarah reminds him gently. “What do you want for dinner? Bucky, are you staying?”

“If you don’t mind,” Bucky says. Steve turns his head to see Sarah rolling her eyes. 

“You know we never. Did you tell Fred you won’t be coming home?”

“Yeah, she knows.”

Bucky nudges at Steve until he sits up enough that Bucky can sit down next to him. Steve leans into his stumped shoulder. What’s left of his arm twitches, as if he wants to put his arm around Steve but remembered a second too late that there isn’t an arm to put around anything. 

Sarah turns on some music as she cooks, a Hootie and the Blowfish album Steve could sing along to in his sleep. It’s accented by pots and pans moving around and the shuffle of the fridge being opened and shut, the dull clap of cabinets swinging open and being nudged shut by Sarah’s feet in afterthought. It’s comforting, sounds Steve knew meant home and family and in less than two months it won’t be his everyday soundtrack, come five-fifteen. 

Sarah is distracted enough that Steve could ask Bucky about posing right now. He’s almost done with what is technically his last piece -- Natasha, in a ballerina’s silhouette, but dressed like a businesswoman, poised to take on the world. But he has the thumbnails, more like cartoons, really, of his Bucky portrait. He would need, of course, to see all of Bucky’s left side in order to get the silhouette just right but that’s something that he hasn’t seen yet. Because of the sex thing. Which Steve still doesn’t know how to bring up.

***

Of course, it brings itself up.

They’re in Bucky’s bedroom in the Barnes’ brownstone, on a day when the girls are at school and Winifred and George are at work. The thing about both of them is that they’re very mindful of their bodies, their own as well as each other’s. Steve is hyperaware of how big he is, even a year after getting that big. He knows if he’s not careful he could crush Bucky uncomfortably. He’s also aware of how sensitive Bucky’s left side is -- the wrong touch is uncomfortable at best and downright painful at worst. 

So they’re being careful. At least, they’re trying to be. Steve is trying to lean more on Bucky’s right, but Bucky’s hand is fisted in the hem on the back of Steve’s long-sleeved thermal so he’s more like in the negative space between Bucky’s torso and arm. Their legs are tangled and for a while Bucky was trying to stick his toes up the leg of Steve’s jeans, because Steve’s legs are warm and Bucky has never not had cold feet in his life. 

The kissing is nice. The kissing is  _ very  _ nice, in fact. Steve knows for a fact that Bucky had, until the past year, much more experience in kissing people than Steve but fell out of practice last spring. He still kisses like he’s unsure about what he’s doing, if Steve likes it (Steve does). They’re just lying there, and Steve’s lips feel tingly but he doesn’t want to stop, so he places a hand on the side of Bucky’s face, thumb close to the corner of his mouth and his fingers spread over his jaw and the side of his neck, right over the pulse under the corner of his jaw. He pushes, just slightly, and the centimeters of distance close and the minute shift in angle is perfect. 

Steve leans into it. Bucky seems responsive and that’s a good sign, right? He carefully shifts so he can get his other arm under him and pushes himself up, not breaking the kiss, and repositions himself so he’s more on top of Bucky, but still not too much pressure on Bucky’s left. Bucky seems fine with this, keeps his hand on Steve, seems to even be holding him there. Steve balances enough so that he can move his hand from below Bucky’s armpit to rest on the other side of Bucky’s face, fingers tangling gently in his hair. 

Somehow, between the new position and the suddenly much more passionate making out, Steve forgets how careful they’re being and his hips shift and Bucky freezes. Steve stops, too, and realizes a second too late the erection that he’s been sporting for probably longer than he’s been paying attention is pressing into the soft divot of where Bucky’s hip meets lower abdomen.

“Sorry,” Steve says, shifting to get off of him. Bucky moves his arm so his bicep cradles the back of Steve’s neck and Steve lies on his side, head resting on Bucky, but from the waist down angled away so not even their feet are touching anymore. 

“No, it’s fine, I get it,” Bucky says but he sounds shaky. 

“Are you okay?” Bucky doesn’t answer right away.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally. 

“No, you don’t have to be, I get it,” Steve says quickly. Bucky quirks an eyebrow. “I hear it’s normal, you know, after traumatic experiences, that you wouldn’t want --”

“Who said I didn’t want to?” Bucky interrupts him. 

“Um --”

“It’s not that, Stevie,” Bucky says, squirming just slightly closer. 

“It’s not?” Bucky smirks a little and presses a kiss to Steve’s forehead. 

“You’re cute, you know that?” 

“Don’t distract me.” The smirk falls of Bucky’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“You shouldn’t want me,” Bucky says after a beat. “I’ve seen the people who message you, Steve. They’re not exactly unattractive, are they?”

“You don’t think you’re  _ attractive  _ enough to be with me?” Steve says incredulously. “D’you really think I’m that shallow?”

“No, of course not, God, Steve, but -- Steve, that girl, the blonde one in your messages, and then all those guys you had saved, I just -- Stevie, you got a type and I ain’t it.”

“I deleted all of those messages when I got rid of the apps. Wait, why do you specifically remember the blonde?” Steve says. Bucky rolls his eyes. 

“We’re talking about your type, not mine.”

“I thought you were anti-slut-shaming. Weren’t you the one who lectured me at length in high school about what assholes the football team was to the cheerleaders?”

“I’m not slut-shaming you! God,” Bucky laughs, but it’s empty. “I thought you were the brains here.”

“Is this a sad, like, I don’t have an arm thing?” Steve asks and then immediately regrets it.

“Excuse me?”

“Like, Buck, I’m a twenty-one-year-old, bisexual, allosexual man, who, by the way, has seen his blood pressure and heart strength and everything go from ‘about to drop dead’ to ‘practically superhuman’ in less than a year. I could literally get hard from the wind blowing the right way,” Steve says. Bucky can’t help but bark out a laugh. “And, like, I love you, a lot. And if you were into it, I would love to have sex.” Bucky is looking at him with this weird expression, like his eyes look so warm but he’s also about to cry, or maybe throw up, or something and Steve hastens to add, “But like, only if you want to, because if you’re, like, not that into sex or not ready or whatever like I’m totally fine with waiting --”

“Shut up,” Bucky says, pressing a kiss to his mouth. “And come back here.”

Steve shifts back onto Bucky. He can feel himself getting hard again, this time against Bucky’s own cock which seems to have taken an interest. Bucky kisses him back with more purpose, less desperation this time around and Steve can’t find it in himself to complain about that.

Bucky’s hand starts tugging on the hem of Steve’s shirt, more insistent than before, and Steve breaks the kiss to take off the shirt and Bucky makes a frustrated sound.

“You look like a goddamn  _ Men’s Health _ cover,” Bucky says.

“I’m sure you don’t look so bad yourself,” Steve replies. Bucky rolls his eyes and grabs Steve around the back of the neck to bring him back down for a kiss. His hand trails down over a pec and his thumb brushes against Steve’s nipple, which makes Steve’s whole body twitch involuntarily. Bucky chuckles against Steve’s mouth. 

“You should take those off,” he says, plucking at a belt loop on Steve’s jeans. 

“Only if you take yours off,” Steve says. A brief look of uncertainty crosses Bucky’s face but then is replaced by determination, but Steve still amends: “You don’t have to if you don’t want.”

“You should see eventually.” 

They both sit up. Steve gets off Bucky’s bed to take off his pants and socks and when he turns around, only wearing his boxer briefs, Bucky is just kicking off his pants, his shirt and sweater puddled on the floor. Steve stares.

Across the left side of his body are a number of scars Steve has not seen before. The worst of them are up by his shoulder, roping across his chest and ribs and side, still pink and raised. It’s no wonder his left side hurts, Steve thinks, looking at how new they still seem. Bucky tries for a smile but doesn’t get very far.

“Told you,” he says. Steve shakes his head and comes back to the bed. He straddles Bucky’s knees, gently pushing him back into the bed. He kisses him, slowly, kissing him deep and then he starts kissing across Bucky’s cheek and then down his jaw, his neck, pausing to suck a mark into the soft skin right above the curl of Bucky’s collarbone. Bucky huffs a laugh, breathy and more than just being ticklish. Steve brushes a hand down Bucky’s left side.

“Does that hurt?”

“Can’t really feel it, it’s too light. Anything else and it will, though,” Bucky says. “I know it’s not super pretty, or anything.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Steve says, picking himself up to look at Bucky. 

“Don’t tell me they’re beautiful because we both know that’s a crock of shit.”

“Of course not. But if you really think I’m here because I’m into you because you’re hot, then you’re even dumber than we thought,” Steve says seriously. Bucky shoves at him, and Steve can’t help the shit-eating grin for just a second before asking, very seriously, “Would you let me blow you?”

“Jesus,” Bucky huffs, shaking his head, but he’s grinning. “Zero to sixty there, huh, Rogers?” 

“You know me,” Steve says, smiling back. “But I’d really like to, if you’d let me.” Bucky makes a face at him and Steve can feel his blush creeping up on him. “I, uh, I like doing it.” Bucky studies his face for a second and then bursts into laughter. 

“Of course you do. Jesus Christ. Yeah, that’d be great, go ahead,” Bucky says, peeking out at him from between his fingers. Steve presses a quick kiss to Bucky’s lips one last time. 

He works his way down slowly. He knows every person is different and likes different things, but he also knows exactly what Bucky likes, from years of hearing him describe the first girls he made out with, the first people he had sex, the bad hookups he recounted at the Sunday brunch table in the dining hall. 

So he makes sure he takes his time working his way down Bucky’s body. He’s gentle as he latches his mouth onto a nipple and lets his fingers play over the other, smiling to himself when Bucky moans above him. He drags his teeth over the swell below his pec gently and leans into it when Bucky’s hand fists itself in his hair. He avoids the skin surrounding Bucky’s navel and instead opts for running his teeth over the sharp juts of his hipbones before carefully hooking his fingers into Bucky’s underwear and tugging it down. 

Bucky’s cock is flushed pink, darker than he expected. The hair surrounding the base curls in on itself and if Steve’s being a hundred percent honest with himself, it looks like Bucky probably hasn’t been trimming it regularly, but that’s not really an issue. Steve rests a hand around the base of it, just loosely, and rubs it up and down once, getting a feel for it. Bucky whines above him. 

“Don’t tease me, asshole.” 

“Be patient,” Steve retorts, and then looks up at him. “I’m just admiring.”

“Oh my god,” Bucky groans, hiding his face behind his forearm. “Just suck my dick, please.”

“Since you said please,” Steve says, and he takes him into his mouth. Bucky makes a choked out sound on contact. 

It’s easily the nicest cock Steve’s ever had in his mouth, not that he’s comparing right now. He works his way down Bucky’s cock slowly, carefully. This is not a quick and dirty blowjob in a club bathroom, and choking on it is probably not going to enhance the mood any. So Steve works his way down, jerking Bucky at the same time and letting his other hand wander all over Bucky’s skin, just touching gently. He finds Bucky’s hand and they lace fingers, which is nice and romantic and not something Steve’s ever really done during sex except maybe with Peggy so this is more than welcome. 

“God, Steve,” Bucky breathes. He sounds like he can’t get a full breath in. Steve squeezes his hand and his breath hitches. By this point the hand that’s also jerking Bucky off is kind of unnecessary so Steve lets go and instead lets that hand wander, too, but below the hips and not over the scarred side of Bucky’s body. Steve avoids the ticklish spot on the back of Bucky’s knee and instead ends up brushing his fingers gently against his perineum and then pressing against Bucky’s hole, not trying to get inside at all, just the pressure of it. Bucky’s breath hitches again and Steve peers up to see tears streaming down his face. He starts to pull off, to ask if he needs to stop, but Bucky’s hand leaves his and threads through his hair and holds him there.

“Please don’t stop,” he begs. “Please.” 

In response, Steve doubles his efforts, but stays gentle, working him down his throat and he does choke, once, but he pulls back just enough to get a breath in and get it under control before he keeps going again. Bucky keeps his hand in Steve’s hair and Steve holds Bucky’s hip instead. 

The only indications that Bucky’s about to come are the twitch of his fingers tightening in Steve’s hair and then the seemingly urgent panting of Steve’s name, but Steve lets him come down his throat without any real strain. Some of it ends up across Bucky’s hips and on Steve’s face but he does his best to catch it in his mouth. He licks up what he can before Bucky pulls him up and holds him close. He’s still crying some, but seems to be getting a grip on himself. 

“Was that okay?” Steve asks, because he has to. Through the tears, Bucky huffs a laugh.

“You are the dumbest man alive, Steve Rogers,” Bucky says. Steve kisses Bucky’s cheek.

“I love you too, Buck.”


	9. Chapter 9

They get back on campus and suddenly, there’s only a month left. 

“Six weeks,” Natasha corrects him over lunch when Steve starts panicking about it. “Two until the art show.”

Which means he’s got two weeks left to ask Bucky if he can paint him. 

Sarah sends him the paperwork for the lease up and Steve spends far too long poring over it before he stacks it neatly on his desk and decides to ignore it for a little while. There’s a place in the paperwork that asks how many people will be living in the apartment and Steve doesn’t want to have to mark it as just the one quite yet. 

Bucky hasn’t said anything about plans after graduation, not even about getting ready to move to Indianapolis. The most he’s heard is about the guy Becca’s apparently been seeing who is definitely not good enough for Bucky’s big sister. 

They’re lying across Steve’s bed when Steve finally decides to work up some nerve and ask about the portrait because honestly it’s now or never and his advisor is getting annoyed that he hasn’t been allowed to see any of the collection because it’s not done. 

He looks over at Bucky. He’s sitting with his legs criss-crossed underneath him and he’s frowning down at a copy of the school newspaper. Steve sets aside the notebook he’s been working in and scoots a hair closer to Bucky.

“Did you see this bullshit the student council passed about paper towel dispensers in dorm bathrooms?” he says, pointing at an article. Steve skims the first paragraph.

“Buck, we’ll be gone by the time it’s implemented, and your apartment doesn’t even have paper towels.”

“It’s still dumb.” Steve shrugs. “Are you giving up?”

“For now, yeah.” Bucky folds up the newspaper messily and presses his hand to the side of Steve’s face, leaning in. Steve accepts the kiss as it comes, lets Bucky deepen it and lets himself enjoy the feeling of Bucky’s lips on his, the tease of his tongue against his upper lip. 

Bucky’s hand shifts down to Steve’s shoulder and Steve takes this cue to break the kiss. Bucky tries to follow him but then his eyes flick up from Steve’s mouth to his own eyes.

“What?”

“Can I draw you?”

“You’ve never once in your life asked to draw me,” Bucky says. 

“For the art show. I wanna do a portrait of you, too.” Bucky frowns. “It’ll be like Nat’s, except not a ballerina and a businesswoman, obviously, but --”

“Show me the sketch.”

Steve grabs the notebook he’d been working in and flips to a page in the middle of his notes, and holds it out for Bucky to see.

It’s the same style, but loosely represented in mechanical pencil. A silhouette of someone whose arm suddenly stops above the elbow, face turned down and away from the viewer so the profile is visible. And from the silhouette, within it, is Bucky, long hair drawn up and reaching towards the viewer with the metal hand that he doesn’t have yet, a reflection off the fingers erased into the shading. 

“They’re both me,” he says flatly.

“Yeah, it’s like, the view that other people have of you, but what’s inside is how you are.”

“You drew the arm.”

“Yeah, I did my best, and it doesn’t have to be in the final piece but I think it would look really cool, but if we can’t get a picture for a reference or something, that’s totally fine --”

“I’ll email the docs about it,” Bucky cuts him off. “When do you wanna do it?”

“Tonight? Just the outlining stuff. I can paint later this week and I won’t need you there for all of it if I get the shadows down tonight as well.” Bucky gets up.

“Let’s go.”

***

Steve spends too long positioning Bucky before he realizes that Bucky’s still wearing his hoodie. 

“I need it off,” he says. Bucky grimaces. “I know, I’m sorry, but it’s gonna be pretty much just black and I won’t even paint the outline of the texture if you don’t want, but I need to see it for referencing.”

Bucky shakes himself out of it and Steve takes it. He throws it over his shoulder and repositions him again until he’s satisfied with the pose. 

“How long’s this gonna take?” Bucky asks.

“This one, not long. I’ll need your face for the interior later but I can do it from a photo,” Steve says as he takes up his position in front of the easel. He tosses the hoodie onto the chair by his hip. 

“How much more do you have?”

“Of the project?” Steve looks over the easel to see Bucky nod minutely. “Lift your head just a little. Thanks. This is the last piece. I’ll probably have to live in the studio for a while but that’s fine.”

“Why’d you wait so long to finish?”

“I didn’t wait that long. I know for a fact there are some people who are nowhere near ready for the art show.”

“What happens to them?” 

“They don’t sleep for a week and then get really drunk and cry at the opening.” Bucky cracks a smile. 

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I procrastinate everything,” Steve says. 

“Why this one.” Steve doesn’t respond. There’s an odd slope to the stump. It’s uneven, an interesting shape for an amputated arm and he should ask but instead he’s ignoring Bucky’s question. “Steve.”

“I wasn’t sure if you’d like the idea,” Steve eventually says, sketching the outline of hair falling behind Bucky’s profile. “I didn’t want you to think I missed the guy you were before I left.”

“I miss him,” Bucky says.

“You’re just as good as he was,” Steve reminds him. “Besides, the guy you were was never in a million years gonna kiss me.”

“That’s probably true,” Bucky admits. Steve laughs. He takes a step back to look at the outline. “Done?”

“With this one, I think,” Steve says. “I wanna get the pose for the interior one tonight, too. We can do the shading this weekend.”

“How do you want me?” 

Steve walks up to him and starts nudging him into a pose. Bucky is pliant under Steve’s hands, lets him put him in position easily. Steve takes full advantage of this, running a hand down over Bucky’s hip to his thigh to his knee to get him to take a half-step forward and then down the other leg to turn his other foot out just slightly. 

“Are they even gonna see my legs?” Bucky asks, chuckling. 

“Maybe I just want an excuse to grope you,” Steve replies. Bucky full-on laughs and pulls him back up, completely ruining the pose Steve’s set up.

“Aw, sugar, you don’t need an excuse,” he coos. He kisses Steve and Steve sort of just melts into it, kisses him back and winds his arms around Bucky’s torso. Bucky tucks his hand into the back pocket of Steve’s pants and Steve feels his fingers tighten around the swell of his ass. He can’t help but laugh against Bucky’s mouth.

“Got plans?” Steve asks. Bucky nips at the center of Steve’s lip. 

“Yeah, maybe I do,” Bucky replies. He drags Steve over to the chair by the easel and pushes him down into it, before settling himself in Steve’s lap, straddling him. His arm winds its way around Steve’s shoulders and his hand finds itself on the back of Steve’s head, fingers gripping at the short bristly hair there. His stump also rests on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve doesn’t even really need to acknowledge it at this point. If he’s being honest with himself, they’ve been naked more than they haven’t been, in Steve’s dorm and Bucky’s room in his suite. They’ve become well-acquainted with each other’s bodies and Steve has made it abundantly clear that the stump doesn’t freak him out.

Bucky grinds his hips down as he tugs at the short hairs on the back of Steve’s head and kisses a line down the side of Steve’s neck. His teeth nip over the curve of his jugular and he sucks, just on the side of too hard, and Steve can’t help but moan.

“Careful, someone might hear,” Bucky teases into Steve’s skin.

“It’s late, and we’ve got a better chance of being heard in the dorm than here,” Steve says. “Don’t tell me you’re just teasing.” Bucky shrugs and Steve feels it against his body more than sees it. 

“Nah, that’s your style,” Bucky says. “You want something?”

“No shit,” Steve replies. Bucky chuckles, presses a biting kiss to the mark he was trying to suck. His hand snakes down Steve’s chest and rubs gently at Steve’s growing bulge. Steve’s hips twitch forward, making Bucky jump involuntarily. Bucky pops the button open and unzips the fly, and slips his hand into Steve’s underwear. 

Steve leans his head forward and kisses Bucky as Bucky gently tugs Steve’s cock out of his underwear and starts jerking him slowly. Steve sighs into the kiss. Bucky’s taking his time, and Steve can’t really complain. When he’s by himself, he’s much more rushed, not nearly as leisurely with jerking himself off. Steve gets so caught up in it, he almost doesn’t notice it when Bucky starts rutting up against Steve’s thigh. Almost.

“Need any help there?” Steve asks, pressing the heel of his hand to the outline of Bucky’s cock in the sweatpants he’s wearing. 

“That would be nice,” Bucky concedes, laughing just a little breathlessly. Steve pushes him to stand up and tugs them down, quickly, before pulling him back into his lap and taking them both in one hand. Bucky groans at the contact. 

“God, your hands are so big,” he says, leaning his head against Steve’s shoulder. “That’s so good, don’t stop.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.” Steve’s pace is much quicker than Bucky’s. Bucky kisses frantically up and down the side of Steve’s neck and jaw. Steve turns his head and catches his lips with his own. When Steve flicks his wrist around their cocks, Bucky whines against the corner of his jaw, almost too loud for his proximity to Steve’s ear. 

“You close?” Steve asks.

“Yeah, baby, almost,” Bucky pants. “You first.”

“Me?” Steve says, breathy and Bucky nips at the skin under Steve’s ear. 

“Wanna see you come,” Bucky says. Steve works his hand over them double-time now. Bucky groans, sucks hard on the skin below Steve’s earlobe. Heat pools low in Steve’s belly as he jerks them both off, and his hips start thrusting on their own accord as he gets close.

“Buck --” he chokes out and Bucky’s teeth scrape over his earlobe as Steve comes between them, painting them both sticky-white. 

“That’s it, sweetheart, god, you’re so pretty,” Bucky whispers, following him over the edge. They sit for a second, panting, breathing each other in and covered in each other’s come. After a moment, Steve looks down at them. 

“I don’t have any tissues in here,” he admits. Bucky looks down at him. 

“What? You’re like, the king of allergies, how do you not have tissues?”

“It’s super clean in here!” Steve argues. “We could use the hoodie?”

“I gotta  _ wear _ that, Rogers.”

***

Steve works late nights on the days he doesn’t have RA duty to finish the painting in time for the show. Bucky poses sometimes but mostly Steve works on his own which leaves him to his thoughts, which, frankly, is dangerous. Steve ponders life after graduation, the fate of these paintings. He could sell them. He probably won’t. It’s a mistake on his part but he knows Sam wants his and Riley’s portraits and he knows they have to stay together (they’re meant to be viewed side by side) so he’s more than happy to give them to them. He also thinks about the lease he needs to sign, ASAP. He also thinks about asking Bucky to stay, to not go to Indianapolis, but that wouldn’t be fair. Regardless of their relationship, Bucky’s wellbeing is more important and if living with Becca for a while is what that is, then that’s what it is.

Steve finishes the painting in almost record time and when it’s done and he sees the grin he’s painted on the interior portrait, he decides that after this, he’s keeping the painting.

The art show opens three days later. Steve dresses up, wearing the navy blazer Sarah picked out for him last summer and is shocked to see that he actually looks kind of like a grownup in the mirror. Bucky comes up behind him and presses a kiss to his cheek.

“Quit checking yourself out, we’re gonna be late,” he teases. 

“Yeah, yeah.” 

The portraits are well-received. Sam and Riley look misty-eyed over theirs. Natasha spends a long time staring at hers. When Steve looks down he sees that she’s standing in third position but when she turns to look at him she says, “You can never let the Russians see this.”

Bucky is pensive in front of his own portrait. Steve comes to stand next to him and takes his hand.

“Do you like it?”

“When you first asked me I swear I expected you to draw, like, baby me,” Bucky says. 

“That would defeat the purpose of this whole project,” Steve says. Bucky nods, and then looks at something beyond Steve’s head. 

“Your mom’s here.”

No sooner has Bucky said that, that Sarah comes up and throws her arms around Steve’s shoulders. 

“They’re gorgeous, honey, I love them. Can I frame your self-portrait?” she asks. She looks over his shoulder and gasps at the painting of Bucky. “Is that the arm?” she asks, crossing to look at the painting more closely. “When will you get it?”

“They keep telling me at the next appointment. It’s like waiting for my braces to come off all over again,” Bucky quips. Sarah laughs. 

“Steve, these are incredible. I mean it about the self-portrait.”

“Yeah, Ma, it’s all yours. I can’t imagine anyone would want it anyway.” She swats at his arm, but can’t seem to stop grinning.

“You’re keeping this one, I guess?” she says to Bucky. Bucky shrugs.

“I’m not sure. Don’t have anywhere to put it,” he says. Sarah tilts her head.

“What, Becca’s all out of wall space already?” Bucky shrugs.

“Doubt she’d want it on her walls. We decided I’m not going there after all, though.”

“Really?” Steve blurts. Bucky looks at him.

“Yeah, punk, thought I told you.”

“You definitely did not. Where are you gonna live?” Sarah is watching them with a smile spreading slowly across her face.

“Gonna stay home for a bit, figure out what I wanna do. Intern somewhere, probably,” Bucky shrugs. “Can’t leave Brooklyn, y’know?”

“Yeah,” Steve nods, as if in a daze. “Move in with me.”

“What?”

“It’s a three-bedroom. Not that I think we should have separate rooms, I just -- shit, sorry, Ma. But it’s got more than enough space and rent wouldn’t be so bad if we were splitting it and that way you wouldn’t have to be home all the time, not that you wouldn’t wanna be but you still have bad days and --”

“Jesus, calm down, Stevie,” Bucky says, but he’s grinning so big he’s giving his own portrait a run for its money. “Yeah. That sounds great.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I’ll move in with you.” Steve throws his arms around Bucky and Bucky staggers back, but he’s laughing in Steve’s ear and Steve can’t help but laugh, too. 


	10. Chapter 10

The remaining weeks of the semester fly by. Steve confirms with his academic advisors that he is allowed to graduate and makes arrangements for his pieces to go to their final locations. Sarah keeps the self-portrait. Natasha and Clint and Sam and Riley get their respective portraits. He keeps Bucky’s. 

His residents move out, slowly and then all at once, during finals week. Billy and Teddy leave the dorm hand in hand and Steve feels proud of them. He’s also thankful that they’re not living together next year. 

Steve gets off his ResLife contract exactly one week, pretty much down to the hour, before he graduates.

There are parties every time he turns around. Kirby and Lee and Goodman are all but abandoned, save for the RAs who are required to stay until after Commencement. Steve doesn’t really have much interest in the parties, if he’s being honest -- a lot of the people throwing them are the people who Natasha and Peggy and Pepper spent their year busting for having parties illegally, and as a result aren’t exactly on good terms with any of them or any other RAs by association.

He spends a good deal of time every day packing up a portion of his room. He borrows Bruce’s jeep on Wednesday and he and Bucky take a lot of their stuff down to Brooklyn to the apartment Steve settled on. It’s a few blocks from Sarah’s place, and even further from the Barnes, but it’s close enough to the gallery that Steve doesn’t have to take the subway, but it’s close enough to a stop that Bucky can get to it easily for his job at an indie bookstore. 

Every now and then while they unpack and start making decisions and blocking out where furniture that they still haven’t bought will go, Steve looks over at Bucky, and just watches him move through their soon-to-be shared space. He’s taken to wearing T-shirts after spring break, which makes Steve feel impossibly light. The muscles in his right arm ripple under his skin, and when he bends the right way, Steve can almost see the muscles in Bucky’s back, recently redeveloped after getting back into exercise in anticipation of the cybernetic arm, which Stark and the doctors have recommended he rebuild some core strength for it. 

Bucky catches him, of course, because it’s Steve and Bucky knows everything about him. He doesn’t even need to look over to tell him to “stop staring, you creep.”

Four more days. Four more days and then this will be his life, probably forever. He can’t wait.

***

Bucky kisses the side of Steve’s head and stands unprompted from the lunch table at the fancy lunch the dining hall is putting on for the graduating seniors on Saturday. Steve leans up to look at him, right hand sort of jelly-fishing away from his body once,  _ leaving? _

“I got a thing. I can go by myself,” Bucky says before Steve can ask it. “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”

“Tomorrow?”

“It’s in Manhattan.” Steve raises an eyebrow. “Oh my god, relax, you sound like my mother.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I’m meeting my dad. I’ll be fine.” He bends over to kiss Steve again. “Don’t worry, punk.”

“Don’t call me that, jerk,” Steve replies. “Love you.” Bucky rolls his eyes but kisses him one more time.

“Yeah, love you too.”

“Where’s he going?” Natasha asks as Bucky heads out of the dining hall.

“Meeting his dad in Manhattan.” Natasha raises an eyebrow. “He’s gotten better about the general public interaction thing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He has!” 

“I believe you!” she replies. “Are we still on for tonight?”

***

They end the year much like they began it.

Pepper, Natasha, and Sam are sitting in a circle on Steve’s floor. Steve is perched on his bed, now separated into two twin mattresses because tomorrow, he moves out. He’s texting Bucky, who is apparently not feeling up to drinking in Steve’s dorm, nor does he want company, please just have fun tonight, Steve, and don’t worry about me. 

Steve settles on the floor next to Natasha. Nat hands him a beer from the cooler in the middle of their circle.

“All moved in?” Sam asks. 

“We’re making an Ikea run next week,” Steve says. “We keep arguing about the bedframe.”

“Riley’s taking his from Madison,” Sam says. “We’re going down after graduation to pack up and then driving up to Richmond.”

“How’s Mama Wilson handling it?” Pepper asks.

“Man, my dad’s cried like every day this week,” Sam says. “My mama’s ready to be done with graduations, already started asking about grandbabies.”

“Bucky’s mom did, too, but I’m pretty sure she was only kidding,” Steve says. 

“Mama Wilson was not,” Sam says, taking a swig of his beer. “What about you two? Shacking up anytime soon?”

“Tony and I are going on a trip after graduation,” Pepper says. “Howard’s graduation present to us.”

“That’s nice of him,” Nat says.

“Tony says it’s a guilt thing. I suppose it is but it’s still a free trip to Europe, just the two of us. It’s a little suspicious if I’m being honest,” Pepper muses. Natasha giggles. 

“Clint’s got a place picked out in Queens. Apparently the building’s been in his family for generations,” she says. “I haven’t decided if I’ll live there, though.”

“Really?” Steve says, incredulous. “I thought you two were a done deal.”

“We are, but there’s some foreign relations opportunities that I have to decide if I want to take them up soon,” she says. “I’d be out of the country for a while.”

“Wow,” Sam says. “Does he know?”

“Yes,” Nat says, too quickly. “He doesn’t know that I probably have to do it. The Russians are here and they’re very interested in my plans.”

“I’m sorry, Nat,” Steve says. She shrugs.

“I can always come home to him,” she says. “What about you?” Steve shrugs.

“We put down the deposit last week and we got the keys so we’re just moving in. He’s got a job at a bookstore until he figures it out and I’ll be working at the gallery.” 

“God, you’re disgusting,” Sam says. “You would have a domestic wet dream of a life after graduation.”

***

Sarah takes some pre-Commencement photos on the steps of the auditorium, of Steve in his cap and gown. Steve whines about it, wants to take these photos with Bucky, but Sarah just shushes him and promises him lots of pictures with Bucky later.

“Have you seen the Barnes?” Steve asks. Sarah shakes her head.

“He’s here, Steve, don’t worry.”

“Yeah, punk, chill out,” a voice says behind him. Steve spins around and stares.

Bucky is standing there, holding his cap in his metal hand. His cap is off, presumably, to show off the neatly combed and gelled hair that is not down to his shoulders, but in fact, short, not unlike how he was before Steve left.

“Your hair.”

“I got a robot arm and you focus on the hair?” Bucky teases.

“I’ve seen the arm. You cut your hair!”

“Yeah, well, it was getting too hot,” Bucky says. “D’you like it?” 

“You look great,” Steve says, earnest. He pulls Bucky to him, and kisses him. Distantly, he hears Sarah taking pictures. “I love you.”

“Love you, too,” Bucky says. “Let’s go get commenced.”

***

Four stupidly long hours later, Steve has a roll of paper in his hand that declares him the holder of a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Studio Art. Bucky has his own, declaring him the holder of a degree in English. Sarah takes photos as Winifred tries to pull herself together. Bucky’s sisters pose for funny pictures and then they go and move out what’s left in their rooms to the cars, and Steve and Bucky are officially no longer college students, but indeed, post-grads. 

Steve kisses Bucky in front of the fountain as they wait for their parents and Bucky’s sisters to leave the auditorium. The girls all ran in to use the restroom, and George wanted a picture of the stage. Steve and Bucky sit on the edge of the fountain, wrapped up in each other. Bucky is backlit by the sunset and his hair, which had been gelled in the morning, has become a little bit ruffled and not all that shiny anymore. 

“What?” Bucky says.

“What?” Steve asks.

“You’re staring.”

“You look really nice here.” Bucky rolls his eyes and kisses him quickly. 

“We’re graduated,” Bucky whispers. Steve laughs.

“I know.”

“We’re  _ adults _ .”

“Isn’t that weird?”

“We have an apartment!” Bucky says. Steve laughs even more and Bucky shoves at him lightly. “It’s not funny!”

“It’s a little funny,” Steve replies. “You ready to be an adult?”

“Fuck, no.”

“Me neither. Good thing we got time.”


End file.
